Serena Williams Family Biography

This is about Serena Williams family and biography. Serena Jameka Williams was born on September 26, 1981. She was a professional tennis player, and always ranked number one.

In fact, she has been ranked as the number one female tennis player by the Women's Tennis Association on five different occasions.

Introduction

1999 marked the year when Serena Williams first reached the top ten of the Women's Tennis Association world rankings.  She had won a few tournaments, and this includes winning the U.S. Open, which is a grand slam event, in 1999 when she was only seventeen years old.

Between the years of 2002 and 2003, Serena was able to win five of six Grand Slam events in order to hold all four of the Grand Slam titles at the same time. She reached the ranking of number one in the world for the first time in July of 2002.

Serena Williams has managed to win a total of 23 Grand Slam titles. This includes a total of 11 titles in singles, ten in women's doubles, and two grand slam titles in mixed doubles. Serena also has two Olympic gold medals in women's doubles. Serena currently has more Grand Slam titles than any other player who is active on the tennis circuit today.

She has additionally won more prize money than any other female athlete ever. She has been ranked as the 17th best tennis player by Tennis Serena Plays Tennis magazine in the last 40 years.

Serena Williams Surgery

Unfortunately, Serena Williams had to have surgery in the middle of 2003 in order to repair a partial tear of her knee tendon.  When she returned to tennis in 2004, her results were not as consistent as they once were. 

In the early part of 2005, Williams won her first Grand Slam title in just 18 months at the Australian Open. However, a string of injuries kept her in competition in only thirteen events in the following two years, and she did not win any of them. 

As a result, her rankings decreased all the way to as low as the World Number 140 in July of 2006. Many fans began to believe that Serena's career was over. However, she surprised everyone when she came back and won the Australian Open, a Grand Slam final, in 2007, even though she was only ranked as number 81.

During that same year, she was able to return to the top ten tennis players and became the World Number 1 again for the fifth time in September of 2008. The Associated Press even called her the female athlete of 2009.  

Serena is the little sister of Venus Williams, who is also a former World Number 1 professional tennis player. They have played one another in 23 professional tennis matches, and Serena has won 13 of those matches. 

Up to July of 2009, the sisters have played one another in eight Grand Slam finals, and Serena came out on top in six of those matches. Often the two girls are teammates to play doubles, which makes them a very formidable pair.

Serena Williams Family & Early Life

Serena Williams was born in Saginaw, Michigan to Oracene Price and Richard Williams. She has four sisters: Lyndrea, Yetunde, Isha, and Venus. Yetunde was murdered on September 14, 2003. The children were raised by their mother to be Jehovah's Witnesses. 

When they were young, they moved to Compton in the Los Angeles suburb, and Serena started playing tennis when she was only four years old. Their father, Richard, home-schooled Serena and her sister Venus, who were both being trained to be tennis stars. Serena continues to be coached by her parents.  

When Serena Williams was nine years old, the family moved away from Compton to West Palm Beach. There they could attend the tennis academy of Rich Macci, and he would be able to provide them with more tennis training. 

Macci was able to see that that were exceptionally talented.  When Serena was ten years old, Richard pulled the girls out of the tennis academy so they could slow down a bit, focus on their school work, and keep them away from the racist comments of other parents of white tennis students. 

When she was ten, Serena had a 46-3 record in the United States Tennis Association junior tour. She was also ranked as No. 1 among players under ten. After he took his daughters out of the academy, he began coaching them on his own at their home.

Serena's Style of Play

Serena Williams is mostly a baseline player. She likes to take quick control of rallies due to her very powerful ground strokes and consistent and powerful serve. She has a great return of serve and excellent ground strokes from both the forehand and backhand wings.

Her serve has been as fast as 128 mph, which makes it the second fastest of all female players. Serena also has very solid volleying skills. She has very powerful overheads and she is able to produce a rare shot these days, which is the drop volley.

Serena's forehand is considered one of the best in the women's tennis game, but her backhand may be the best. She is able to hit a winning backhand from nearly any place on the tennis court. Serena has a very aggressive style of play. 

This results in her having a large amount of unforced errors. Serena has both an excellent offensive and defensive game.

Off the Court

Serena Williams is known off the tennis court as well as on it. First, she is well known for her fashion. She wears colorful and somewhat unusual clothing on the tennis court. 

Of particular interest was the black Lycra catsuit that Serena wore at the U.S. Open in 2002. At the 2004 U.S. Open, Serena Williams wore denim skirts along with knee-high boots.  Of course she had to take the boots off during the matches. 

In 2008 at Wimbledon, Serena Williams wore a white trench coat during her warm up for her beginning match. She wore this despite the sunny weather. Off the tennis court, Serena Williams has also presented a number of new designs. In November of 2004 at a premiere for After the Sunset, she wore a red gown that seemed almost topless. 

Serena Williams Endorsements

At one time, Serena Williams had a special clothing line with Puma. Then she had a line with Nike. Her deal with Nike was worth $40 million and the deal was signed in April of 2004. 

She has also had her own clothing line called Aneres, which is her name spelled backward. In 2009, Serena began her own signature line of jewelry and handbags.

Serena Williams has also been involved with entertainment. She has appeared on different television shows and has provided voice work for animated programs. She has been in an episode of The Simpsons as well as in Higglytown Heroes and the cartoon by Nickelodeon, Avatar: The Last Airbender. 

Serena Williams has been in the 2003 and 2004 editions of the Swimsuit Issue of Sports Illustrated. She has appeared twice on Punk'd on MTV. She was also on the reality tv show, Fast Cars an Superstars: The Gillette Young Guns Celebrity Race. She has been on episodes of My Wife and Kids, ER, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and she has even been in music videos.

Serena Williams Social

As of 2009, Serena appeared in a feminine hygiene product campaign, in which she was in print advertisements and online videos for Tampax Pearl tampons.

Serena and Venus have also become part owners of the Miami Dolphins as of 2009. The Williams sisters are the first African American females who were able to have ownership in an NFL franchise.  Some of the other prominent owners include Jimmy Buffett, Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez, and Gloria and Emilio Estefan.

In 2008, Serena Williams helped to fund the construction for the Serena Williams Secondary School in Matooni, Kenya. She has also received a Celebrity Role Model Award from Avon Foundation in 2003 due to her work with breast cancer.

Serena Williams An Inspiration

Serena has been involved in clinics that have taken place in community centers and schools, and particularly for children who are considered high-risk. Serena has been awarded the "Family Circle and Prudential Financial Player Who Makes a Difference Award" in 2004 and the "Young Heroes Award" from the Big Brothers and the Big Sisters of Greater L.A. and Inland in 2003.  

Serena Williams also said that she was working on writing a TV show story line which she plans to convert into a script by her energy. Her intention is for the show to focus on her "treatment" and will have subject matter from a few popular television programs in America, including Family Guy, Sex and the City, and Desperate Housewives.  After the U.S. Open in 2009, Serena Williams released her autobiography, called On the Line.

Her success has earned her numerous accolades, including being named one of the Greatest Female Athletes of All Time by ESPN in 2016.

In 2021, Williams was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, becoming the first Black woman to receive the honor.

Williams is a true inspiration to aspiring tennis players and athletes, showing that anything is possible with hard work, dedication, and a little bit of luck.

Through her career, Williams has proven that she is a force to be reckoned with, and her story is one of true success.

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