Former world-class tennis player Serena Williams on Tuesday announced that she'd retire from the sport after the upcoming US Open Championship.
"I have never liked the word retirement. It doesn’t feel like a modern word to me. I’ve been thinking of this as a transition, but I want to be sensitive about how I use that word, which means something very specific and important to a community of people. Maybe the best word to describe what I’m up to is evolution. I’m here to tell you that I’m evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me," Williams said in an article in the Vogue.
Earlier, Serena Williams defeated the Spanish player Nuria Parrisas-Diaz (6:3, 6:4) in the first round of the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) tournament in Toronto.
The victory over Parrisas-Diaz was the first for Williams since June 2021, when the American reached the 1/8 finals of Roland Garros, where she lost to Kazakhstan's Elena Rybakina.
In total, Williams has won 23 Grand Slam tournaments and ranks second only to Australian Margaret Court. Serena has also won the WTA tournament 73 times. The American won the singles tournament once at the Olympics and took home the gold three times in doubles tournaments at the Games.