How Serena Williams rewrote the playbook for female athletes juggling motherhood and sport
This past week marked the fourth year that Serena Williams had made headlines for her successful performance at the Australian Open tennis tournament.
Williams claimed the most tournaments in the sport’s history with 23.
Williams is one of the wealthiest athletes in the world, with a net worth of $40 million.
Serena Williams became the first female athlete to win the Australian Open four times. (Photo by Michael Buckner/Getty Images)
In addition to winning the Australian Open, she set new US Open and French Open, and Olympic and Wimbledon records.
Williams came into the game with a reputation of being a one-woman team.
“She was a little girl who grew up on tour at the same time as the other girls,” says Nick Bollettieri, the head tennis coach of the U.S. Davis Cup team. “They were always playing each other. And she was always the star of that. But she worked really hard to be, in a way, the captain.”
For Williams, she’s got a bit of celebrity with the tennis world, an international fan base, and a net worth that is valued at some $20 million, making her the richest female athlete in the world.
But as she gears up to begin a new career as a tennis player, Williams has a few issues going on in her life. Her mother is battling Alzheimer’s, the tennis courts just opened up a new tennis center outside Dallas and she just had her second child with fiancé Alexis Ohanian.
“This week, I think Williams’s mental issues surfaced because she wanted to be back on the tennis court,” Bollettieri says. “It was time now for her to figure out and really, really make that determination.”
In addition to Williams’s mother, she has had to contend with the media and the public with her recent appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and the controversial statement that she was not ready to go back to the top after suffering a foot injury at the Australian Open.
Her mom Dione is currently receiving treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.
“I think it’s a combination of things. Her mother’s illness, her mom’s illness and
