How Serena Williams rewrote the playbook for female athletes juggling motherhood and sport
Serena Williams is known for her intense training regimen, but when she first stepped onto the tennis court she was a college student, not yet a world-class athlete.
In the beginning, Williams was just another young woman on the tennis court, competing alongside her male peers in hopes of a potential career in the sport. It wasn’t until 2008 that Williams took her game to the world stage. That season, Williams won her first Wimbledon title, making her one of only three players ever to win the men’s and women’s singles championships at the same summer’s event (the other two are Serena and Martina Navratilova, both of whom have won the Grand Slams three times apiece).
There was more to it than simply finding a way to win matches. Williams said she was “inspired by women who had no money to come to the Grand Slam tournament and win it, and I wanted to be one of them.”
It was then she decided to write a book, titled “Serena: A Champion’s Life,” in which she describes her life and journey in her chosen sport. During a Q&A at the United Kingdom’s Wimbledon, Williams shared how she was inspired by female champions who were not wealthy. When she had the chance to write the book, Williams was faced with a huge problem. With her father’s funding, Williams was able to afford the trip to France to go over some of the tennis court, and the tennis coaches who would help her train, but when she tried to write a manuscript for her book, she had no money.
She was forced to write it without any financial support.
When she released her book, it was a moment in history, but she felt the need to continue her fight for financial freedom since then. She started to work on “A Champion’s Mindset,” a memoir that’s an unapologetic look at competing on the biggest stage of her life. And she wasn’t sitting on the sidelines, but rather she was on the court, competing at her peak.
She became the number one ranked player in the world and her reign was the most dominant in sports history. Yet, she said, when she became a mother