Serena Willams, widely considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time, will surely be missed after she announced she will be retiring from the sport after the 2022 US Open.
The 23-time Grand Slam winner has had an incredible career, and has told fans she is “more grateful for you than I can ever express in words”.
She added to Vogue: “You have carried me to so many wins and so many trophies”.
The 40-year-old has announced she is making the decision because she wants to “grow” her family.
Serena Williams has a huge net worth of £206.6million, which trumps her sister by some margin.
Venus has a net worth of £78.5million a huge sum but still some way off her younger sister. Indeed, Serena has amassed her vast wealth by being one of the greatest sportswomen of all time. Williams has been ranked number one in the world eight times, while the 40-year-old has earned more money from tennis than any other female player in history.
In terms of career money alone, the Californian star has earned about £76million. While she has won 23 singles Grand Slam titles and 14 doubles titles with her sister Venus Williams. The supremo also won gold medals at the Sydney, Beijing and London Olympics.
It is thought in a typical year Serena will clock up around £24m from on-court earnings and endorsements, something that happened between June 2019 and June 2020. Serena started playing as a professional in the Ameritech Cup Chicago tournament in 1995, when she was just 14-years-old. Ranked world number 304 at the time, she shocked fans by beating the world number seven and subsequently world number four, before suffering defeat in the semi-finals.
From then she went from strength to strength and her net worth is reflective of this. Both of the sisters have suffered with injuries in their older years and Venus has especially struggled with her fitness – meaning she has been unable to play as much.
“I have recently been diagnosed with Sjogren’s”, she said in a statement. She explained the disease “is an ongoing medical condition that affects my energy level and causes fatigue and joint pain”.
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Serena also recently opened up about the equal pay debate among athletes. She said in an exclusive interview with Glamour’s Melissa Harris Perry. “These sports have a lot of work to do. And I really hope that I can be helpful in that journey because I do believe that women deserve the same pay. We work just as hard as men do. I’ve been working, playing tennis, since I was three-years-old. And to be paid less just because of my sex—it doesn’t seem fair.
