Serena Jameka Williams was born on September 26th, 1981, in Saginaw, Michigan, in the United States, to mom Oracene Price and father Richard Williams. Serena was the youngest of Price's five daughters, one of whom is also another American tennis legend, Venus Williams.
Williams sisters started playing tennis in Compton, California, and Serena was only four years old when she first started. At the age of nine, Serena Williams, along with her sister, started attending Rick Macci's tennis academy.
Both sisters were dominant already at a young age, and soon, they would get a chance to meet also on the WTA Tour. Early in her career, Serena struggled with age restrictions, which prevented her from entering tournaments, but when she played the Ameritech Cup Chicago in 1997, she showed her incredible talent, beating world no. 7 Mary Pierce and world no. 4 Monica Seles.
Soon after this, Williams' incredible journey started. In 1999, she won the US Open at the age of 17. Despite further Grand Slam success awaiting the American until 2002, in that year, she started a string of four consecutive major titles, completing a Career Grand Slam but also winning four Grand Slams in a row, something very rare in the world of tennis.
In all of the finals, from the 2002 Roland Garros to the 2003 Australian Open, she beat her sister Venus Williams. Serena then completed the feat of winning four consecutive Grand Slams once more in her career, but again, it wasn't in the same calendar year.
The legendary American won every major tournament from the 2014 US Open to the 2015 Wimbledon, but in an attempt to complete the Calendar Grand Slam at Flushing Meadows, she was stopped by Roberta Vinci in the US Open semifinals.
And despite not achieving every possible feat in the world of tennis, Serena Williams is by many regarded as the greatest female tennis player of all time, and often also the greatest female athlete of all time.
She has won 23 Grand Slam titles, only one less than Margaret Court, who completed this feat before the Open Era, and Serena completely dominated the WTA Tour in the years when she competed.
She spent a total of 319 weeks as world no. 1, and also shares a record with Steffi Graf for the most consecutive weeks as the highest-ranked player, as both managed to reign for exactly 186 weeks.
Serena Williams also competed after giving birth to her first daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian, and she even played in four Grand Slam finals but lost all of them. At the 2022 US Open, the legendary American officially retired from the sport.
