Serena Williams

Serena Jameka Williams (born: ),https://www.wtatennis.com/players/230234/- is an American former professional tennis player. Widely regarded as one of the greatest tennis players of all time, she was ranked world No. 1 in singles by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) for 319 weeks, including a joint-record 186 consecutive weeks, and finished as the year-end No. 1 five times. She won 23 Grand Slam women's singles titles, the most in the Open Era, and the second-most of all time. She is the only player to accomplish a career Golden Slam in both singles and doubles.
==Personal life==
Serena was born on September 26, 1981, in Saginaw, Michigan, to Oracene Price and Richard Williams. She is the youngest of Price's five daughters: half-sisters Yetunde, Lyndrea, and Isha Price, and full older sister Venus. When the children were young, the family moved to Compton, California, where she started playing tennis at the age of four. Her father home-schooled her and her sister, Venus. While he and subsequently her mother have been their official coaches, her other mentors have included Richard Williams, a Compton man who shared her father's name and subsequently founded The Venus and Serena Williams Tennis Tutorial Academy.
When Williams was nine, she and her family moved from Compton to West Palm Beach, Florida so she could attend the tennis academy of Rick Macci, who provided her with additional coaching.https://archive.ph/20120708024727/http://blackathlete.net/artman2/publish/Tennis_35/Venus_Serena_Reflect_As_They_Prepare_For_Fed_Cup_3202.shtml Macci did not always agree with Williams's father, but respected that "he treated his daughters like kids, allowed them to be little girls". Richard stopped sending his daughters to national junior tennis tournaments when Williams was 10, as he wanted them to "go slowly" and focus on school work, and because he wanted to ensure that they would not burn out before turning professional. Experiences of racism also influenced this decision, as he had heard white parents talk about the Williams sisters in a derogatory manner during tournaments. By 1991, Williams had a 46–3 record on the United States Tennis Association junior tour and was ranked No. 1 among under-10 players in Florida. In 1995, when Williams was in the ninth grade, her father pulled his daughters out of Macci's academy and took over all coaching at their home. When asked in 2000 whether it would have been more beneficial for them to have followed the normal path of playing regularly on the junior circuit, Williams responded, "Everyone does different things. I think for Venus and I, we just attempted a different road, and it worked for us."
Williams is married to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. He proposed to her on 10 December 2016, in Rome. On 30 December 2016, Williams announced their engagement in a Reddit post.https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/06/serena-williams-cover-story They married on 16 November 2017, in New Orleans in a wedding ceremony that had 350 guests, including prominent personalities like Beyoncé, Anna Wintour, Kelly Rowland and Kim Kardashian. She planned to move to San Francisco with Ohanian after the wedding.
On April 19, 2017, Williams posted a sideways picture of herself on Snapchat that focused on her midsection; it had the caption, "20 weeks", prompting speculation that she was pregnant. Later that evening, her spokesperson confirmed the pregnancy. The fact that she was 20 weeks pregnant when announcing her pregnancy meant that she was eight weeks pregnant when she won the Australian Open earlier that year.https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/39653317 Williams later said that posting the picture on Snapchat was an accident, and that she had intended to save the photo for her records.
In September 2017, Williams gave birth to her daughter.https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/09/serena-williams-revealed-her-daughters-name-and-her-first-photo.html She had an emergency caesarean-section delivery due to the baby's heart rate dropping during labor and was at first devastated about it. Williams gave her daughter a doll, Qai Qai, that has become famous on social media. She has also faced many questions whether she would raise her daughter to play tennis to which she answered saying she has already hired a coach for her daughter. She also posts many pictures of her and her daughter on the tennis court with rackets. In May 2023, she revealed that she was pregnant with her second child in an announcement before the Met Gala, where she was seen visibly pregnant. She gave birth to a second daughter in August 2023.
Williams has two tattoos on her body, one is a small heart on the back of her neck, and the second is a rose stick on the back of her left shoulder. She is a vegan, and when Serena is training and competing, she adheres to a plant-based diet.
== Career ==
Williams first major achievement was capturing the US Open singles title in 1999. She partnered with her sister to gain doubles titles in the US Open (1999), French Open (1999), Wimbledon (2000, 2002), and Australian Open (2001, 2003). Further successes include singles titles at the French Open (2002), Wimbledon (2002, 2003), the US Open (2002), and the Australian Open (2003).
In 2002 and 2003, the Williams sisters faced off in four consecutive Grand Slam finals, the only siblings in the history of the sport to do so (Serena bested Venus each time). In all, Serena Williams won eight Grand Slam singles titles and an Olympic gold medal in women's doubles (2000), which she shares with her sister.
Williams' parents wanted their daughter to wait until she was 16 to participate in professional tournaments. In 1995, just after turning 14, Williams planned to make her professional debut as a wild-card entry in the Bank of the West Classic in Oakland, California, but was denied by the WTA owing to their age-eligibility restrictions. She subsequently filed an antitrust lawsuit against the women's tour, but withdrew it at her parents' request. Her first professional event was in October 1995 at the Bell Challenge in Quebec, where she used a wild-card entry to circumvent age-eligibility rules. She lost in the first qualifying round to then 18-year-old American Annie Miller, winning just two games.
After not playing in 1996, Williams won her first main-draw match at the Ameritech Cup Chicago in November 1997. Ranked No. 304, she upset No. 7 Mary Pierce, and No. 4 Monica Seles, recording her first career wins over top 10 players and becoming the lowest-ranked player in the Open Era to defeat two top-10 opponents in one tournament. She ultimately lost in the semifinals to No. 5 Lindsay Davenport. Her run in Chicago propelled Williams into the Top 100 for the first time in her career, and she finished 1997 ranked No. 99 in the world.
At the 1998 Sydney International, Williams qualified and defeated No. 3 Davenport in the quarterfinals, before losing to Arantxa Sánchez Vicario in the semifinals. Williams made her debut in the main draw of a Grand Slam tournament at the Australian Open, where she defeated sixth-seeded Irina Spîrlea in the first round, before losing to her sister, Venus, in the second round in the sisters' first professional match. She reached six other quarterfinals during the year, but lost all of them, including her first match against No. 1-ranked Martina Hingis at the Lipton International Players Championships in Key Biscayne, and her second match against Venus at the Italian Open in Rome. She lost in the fourth round of the French Open to Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, and the third round of the US Open to Spîrlea. She withdrew from Wimbledon two games into a match with Virginia Ruano Pascual, after straining a calf muscle during the first set. After losing the French Open mixed doubles final to Venus and Justin Gimelstob, Williams then won the mixed doubles titles at Wimbledon and the US Open with Max Mirnyi, completing the Williams family's sweep of the 1998 mixed doubles Grand Slam tournaments. She won her first professional title in doubles at the U.S. National Indoor Championships in Oklahoma City with Venus, defeating the pair of Catalina Cristea and Kristine Kunce in the final to become the third pair of sisters to win a WTA title. They won two more doubles titles that year. Williams finished the year ranked No. 20 in singles, the fastest to that milestone in women's history.
Because of a foot injury, Williams had to sit out from the 2011 Hopman Cup and the 2011 Australian Open. She then made her first appearance on the WTA tour in almost a year at the 2011 AEGON International, in Eastbourne, winning her first match against Tsvetana Pironkova, 1–6, 6–3, 6–4, but lost to top-seeded world No. 3 Vera Zvonareva in the second round 6–3, 6–7, 5–7 in a match that lasted over three hours.
During the 2011 Rogers Cup, Williams swept through the tournament, by first beating Alona Bondarenko in the first round 6-0 6-3 and then Julia Goerges in the second round in straight sets as well. After back to back tripple setters with 3rd round Jie Zheng and quarter-finalist Lucie Safarova, she beat one of the most consistent players of the year, Viktoria Azarenka, in the semifinals. In the finals, Williams went head-to-head with Australia's Samantha Stosur. In a 6-4 6-2 set win, Williams claimed her second Rogers Cup title and jumped the rankings from 80th to 31th.
At the Cincinatti Open (Western & Southern Open), Williams defeated Lucie Hradecka 6-3 7-5 in the first round. Although she's been doing well, she had to retire in the Cincy Open because of a right toe injury, thus, sending Samantha Stosur, who Williams was going against in the Second round before her toe got injured, into the third round of Western & Southern Open.
Along with her elder sister Venus, Serena Williams was coached by her parents Oracene Price and Richard Williams. Turning professional in 1995, she won her first major singles title at the 1999 US Open. From the 2002 French Open to the 2003 Australian Open, she was dominant, winning all four major singles titles (each time over Venus in the final) to achieve a non-calendar year Grand Slam and the career Grand Slam, known as the 'Serena Slam'. The next few years saw her claim two more singles majors, but suffer from injury and decline in form. Beginning in 2007, however, she gradually returned to form despite continued injuries, retaking the world No. 1 singles ranking. Beginning at the 2012 Wimbledon Championships, Williams returned to dominance, claiming Olympic gold (completing the Career Golden Slam in singles) and winning eight out of thirteen singles majors, including all four in a row from 2014–15 to achieve a second "Serena Slam". At the 2017 Australian Open, she won her 23rd major singles title, surpassing Steffi Graf's Open Era record. She then took a break from professional tennis after becoming pregnant and reached four major finals upon returning to play. In August 2022, Williams announced her impending "evolution" away from professional tennis and played what was expected to be her final match at the 2022 US Open.
== History ==
Her channel was created on April 28, 2023 and first upload video on May 5, 2023.
== Trivia ==
* Her middle name is Jameka.
* Her favorite city in the world is Rome.
* She won her first major title in 1999 at the U.S. Open, beating Martina Hingis in the final.
* She has played in 60 Grand Slam tournaments in her career and has won 21 of them.
* Her favorite sport to watch other than tennis is gymnastics.
* Williams and Chris Evert have each won six U.S. Open singles titles -- the most in the Open era.
* She has been ranked No. 1 for 253 weeks in her career. Only three players -- Graf (377), Martina Navratilova (332) and Evert (260) -- have enjoyed the top spot longer.
* She has competed at three Olympics and won four gold medals.
* She has won 28 straight matches and four straight titles at Grand Slam events.
==References==
Category:Sports YouTubers
Category:American YouTubers
Category:Users who joined in 2023