Serena Williams
Few women have revolutionized women’s tennis more than Serena Williams, whose powerful and precise playing style has won her a record 23 Grand Slam singles titles.
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Serena Williams returns a shot to Anastasija Sevastova, of Latvia, during the semifinals of the U.S. Open tennis tournament at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on Thursday, Sept. 6, 2018, in New York. (Photo by Greg Allen/Invision/AP)
Few women have revolutionized women’s tennis more than Serena Williams, whose powerful and precise playing style has won her a record 23 Grand Slam singles titles.
Coached by her father, Serena started playing when she was four. She turned professional in 1995, at age 14, one year after her sister Venus.
She won her first Gram Slam singles title in 1999 and would become one of the world’s Top 10 players.
In 2002, Serena won the French Open, the U.S. Open, and Wimbledon, and the next year won the Australian Open completing a career Grand Slam. She continued to win matches and break records over the next 15 years.
She married and in 2017 and had a daughter . One year later she returned to tennis tournaments. Though she has not won a Grand Slam tournament since her return, she has reached the finals at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. All along she became an inspiration for young African American women to take tennis as their sport.
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