Serena Williams likely brought the curtain down on an incredible career Friday night as the 40-year-old succumbed to Ajla Tomljanovic in the third round of the U.S. Open.
SERENA AND VENUS WILLIAMS DUMPED OUT OF US OPEN DOUBLES AS RETIREMENT LOOMS
Watched by a raucous crowd, including her sister, Venus, in Flushing, New York, Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam champion and former world No. 1, lost 7-5, 6-7, 6-1 in an absorbing contest lasting more than three hours in which she saved multiple match points.
“These are happy tears, I guess. I don’t know,” Williams said in a post-game interview. “And I wouldn’t be Serena if it wasn’t Venus. Thank you, Venus.”
“I wouldn’t be Serena if there wasn’t Venus.”@serenawilliams ? @Venuseswilliams pic.twitter.com/C7RZXcf23E
— US Open Tennis (@usopen) September 3, 2022
She had briefly delayed her retirement with a shock win in the second round against world No. 2 Anett Kontaveit.
The most recent Grand Slam victory for Williams, who rose to prominence in the sport alongside her sister after a victory in the U.S. Open in 1999, was at the Australian Open in 2017.
Serena and her sister were eliminated from doubles Thursday.
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Williams, who gave birth to Alexis Olivia in 2017, announced she would be “evolving away” from tennis after the U.S. Open in a cover story for Vogue earlier this year. Her daughter has been wanting to be a big sister, and one of Williams’s priorities after the U.S. Open is expanding her family.
“I have never liked the word retirement. It doesn’t feel like a modern word to me,” Serena Williams said in the piece. “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.”
When asked after her U.S. Open defeat if she would reconsider, she said it was unlikely.
The tennis star competed in two major tournaments this year before the U.S. Open, including the Canadian Open and Wimbledon, where she was eliminated in the first round.
