SERENA WILLIAMS

Serena Jameka Williams (born September 26, 1981) is an American professional tennis player who, as of February 2, 2009, is ranked World No. 1 by the Women’s Tennis Association, having now held that ranking on four different occasions. She is the current US Open and Australian Open singles champion and has won 20 Grand Slam titles: ten in singles, eight in women’s doubles, and two in mixed doubles. She also has won two Olympic gold medals in women’s doubles.^[3] She is the most recent player, male or female, to have held all four Grand Slam singles titles simultaneously. Williams has won more career prize money than any other woman, in any sport.^[4] In 2005, Tennis magazine ranked her as the 17th-best player of the preceding forty years. She is the younger sister of a former World No. 1 professional female tennis player, Venus Williams.

Serena was born in Saginaw, Michigan into an African American family. When she, her sister, and her three half sisters were young, their parents, Richard and Oracene (also called Brandy), moved to the Los Angeles suburb of Compton. Her father dreamed of making at least one of his daughters a tennis superstar, hoping that involvement in sports would give them an opportunity for a better life. The children were homeschooled.

When Serena was four and a half, she won her first tournament, and she entered 49 tournaments by the age of 10, winning 46 of them. At one point, she replaced her sister Venus as the number one ranked tennis player aged 12 or under in California.

In 1991, Richard Williams, saying that he hoped to prevent his daughters from facing racism, stopped sending them to national junior tennis tournaments, and Serena attended a tennis school run by professional player Rick Macci in Haines City, Florida at Greneleaf Resort and Conference Center instead. Macci had already helped the careers of Jennifer Capriati and Mary Pierce, among others. During that time period, Serena would sometimes train with Andy Roddick. Both players recall that Serena beat him in a practice match, although the two dispute the score, with Serena saying it was 6–1 and Roddick claiming it was 6–4. Soon Richard, who had struck a deal on behalf of his daughters with a major clothing company, was able to move the rest of the Williams family to West Palm Beach, to be near Serena and Venus.

Williams became a professional in September 1995 at the age of 14. Because of her age, she had to participate in non-WTA events at first. Her first professional event was the tournament in Quebec City, where she was ousted in less than an hour of play, with 240 dollars in winnings.

Williams’s biggest achievement of 1997 was her run in Chicago; ranked World No. 304, she upset both Monica Seles and Mary Pierce, recording her first career wins over top 10 players. She finished 1997 at World No. 99.

1998 was the first year that Williams finished ranked in the WTA top 20. She began the year in Sydney as a qualifier, ranked World No. 96, and defeated World No. 3 Lindsay Davenport in a quarterfinal. Williams was then expected to do well in her first Grand Slam tournament, but lost in the second round of the Australian Open to sister Venus.

Williams reached six other quarterfinals during the year. She 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 Slams. Williams won her first pro title in doubles at Oklahoma City with sister Venus, becoming the third pair of sisters to win a WTA tour women’s doubles title. She earned U.S. $2.6 million in prize money during the year.

In 2009, at the Medibank International in Sydney, top-seeded Williams defeated Australian Samantha Stosur in the first round 6–3, 6–7(4), 7–5 after saving four match points when Stosur served for the match at 5–4 in the third set. Williams then defeated Sara Errani in the second round 6–1, 6–2. In the quarterfinals against Danish player Caroline Wozniacki, Williams won 6–7(5), 6–3, 7–6(3) after saving three match points when Wozniacki served for the match at 6–5 in the third set. In the semifinals against Russian Elena Dementieva, Williams was defeated 6–3, 6–1. This was Williams’s third consecutive loss to Dementieva.

Williams was the second-seeded player at the Australian Open. She defeated Yuan Meng of China in the first round, Gisela Dulko in the second round (saving six set points in second set), Peng Shuai of China in the third round, and Victoria Azarenka in the fourth round after Azarenka was forced to retire from the match in the second set. Williams twice was three points from defeat before beating eighth-seeded Svetlana Kuznetsova in the quarterfinals and and then defeated fourth-seeded Dementieva in the semifinals. She went on to defeat Dinara Safina in the final to claim her tenth Grand Slam singles title, ranking her seventh on the list of female players with the most Grand Slam singles titles. The win also returned her to the World No. 1 ranking and resulted in her becoming the all-time career prize money leader in women’s sports. In women’s doubles, Serena and her sister Venus captured the title for the third time, defeating Daniela Hantuchová and Ai Sugiyama in the final.

SOURCE: Wikipedia