World-renown tennis icon Serena Williams recently said, “I’m not retired,” and opened up about her life away from the spotlight.
Serena assured fans that she hasn’t retired from Tennis during TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco on Oct. 24.
“I am not retired,” she told reporters at the conference while promoting her investment company, Serena Ventures. “The chances [of a return] are very high. You can come to my house, I have a court.”
The 41-year-old initially announced her retirement from Tennis via a Vogue essay in August. In it, she explained her dislike for the word.
“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,” she wrote in her personal essay. “Maybe the best word to describe what I’m up to is evolution…. I’ve been reluctant to admit to myself or anyone else that I have to move on from playing tennis.” The following month, she played her final match at the 2022 U.S. Open via the famed Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, New York.
Serena echoed the sentiments from her essay at the TechCrunch conference.
“I still haven’t really thought about [retirement]. But I did wake up the other day and go on the court the other day and [realized] for the first time in my life that I’m not playing for a competition, and that felt very weird,” she said about being away from the spotlight. “It was like the first day of the rest of my life, and so far, I am enjoying it. But I’m still trying to find that balance.”
The 23-time Grand Slam winner and four-time Olympic gold medalist turned pro in 1995 and made her U.S. Open debut in 1998. Following her trailblazing tennis career, she’s been busy working on several business endeavors, including Serena Ventures and her self-titled jewelry line, Serena Williams Jewelry, among other things.
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