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Serena Williams appears to be getting ready to step off of professional tennis courts for good. The legendary athlete, who’s won countless titles — including 23 Grand Slams — over a playing career that has spanned nearly three decades, suggested that she intends to retire after the upcoming U.S. Open in a Vogue essay published on Tuesday.
Williams, 40, is currently playing in the Canadian Open, where she claimed her first singles victory in slightly more than a year earlier this week, and where she’ll return to play another match on Wednesday. While continuing to face the world’s top athletes in tournaments like Wimbledon and last year’s French Open, Williams has also increasingly turned her attention to projects outside of tennis in recent years.
In her new essay, she said that “evolving away from tennis” would give her an opportunity to prioritize other things.
“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,” she wrote. “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.”
One of those priorities, she said, is Serena Ventures, a venture capital firm she started several years ago.
The other is her family and the hope of having another child with her husband Alexis Ohanian. Their daughter, Alexis Olympia, is now 4 years old.
“I want to grow that family,” she wrote.
This is a developing story and will be updated.