After she announced the end of her tennis career, fans around the world are asking: Why is Serena Williams retiring? The tennis champion wrote an essay for the cover of the September 2022 issue of Vogue about why she decided to pursue retirement —or as she puts it, “evolution.”
“There is no happiness in this topic for me,” she wrote in her Vogue essay. “I know it’s not the usual thing to say, but I feel a great deal of pain. It’s the hardest thing that I could ever imagine. I hate it. I hate that I have to be at this crossroads. I keep saying to myself, I wish it could be easy for me, but it’s not. I’m torn: I don’t want it to be over, but at the same time I’m ready for what’s next.
In her essay, she described the time that she spent with her daughter during her time as a tennis player on the court caring for her, and how she would do anything for Olympia even outside of her tennis career. “In five years, Olympia has only spent one 24-hour period away from me.
Though she remains one of the greatest tennis players of all time, she wants her legacy to be more than tennis, and she’s just getting started. “Over the years, I hope that people come to think of me as symbolizing something bigger than tennis. I admire Billie Jean because she transcended her sport. I’d like it to be: Serena is this and she’s that and she was a great tennis player and she won those slams.”Watch 'King Richard' $9.