The American has "changed tennis", "opened the doors", "invented intimidation", brought in "business", her coach Patrick Mouratoglou told AFP in September 2021, to explain how her champion was the greatest player in history, she who announced on Tuesday, approaching her 41st birthday (September 26), that the "countdown" to her retirement was on.

Since he was handed his first racquet shortly after his fourth birthday, only his sister Venus has, at times, challenged his superiority.

This was the case in their childhood, in the black ghetto of Compton, in Los Angeles, because Serena was fifteen months younger and attracted less attention than her slender sister.

But their father Richard was never mistaken.

When a trainer assured him that he wanted Venus, then ten years old, "the next female Michael Jordan", he replied: "No, I want the next two".

The former manager of a babysitting company was a key figure in the careers of the Williams sisters, which he shaped from an early age after learning the coaching trade from books and videos.

The story was told in 2021 in a successful film where Will Smith plays the role of the father.

Spotted quickly - the New York Times was already talking about it when they weren't ten years old - the Williams sisters first scoured the circuit together.

It was Serena who won the family's first Grand Slam title, at the US Open in 1999, just before she turned 18.

Then Venus became world No.1 in 2002, shortly before her sister.

From Roland-Garros 2002 to the Australian Open 2003, four consecutive Grand Slam tournaments ended with the same poster: Williams against Williams.

Never seen.

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Win by knockout

The money also quickly flowed in.

Sports equipment brands made the two sisters sign multi-million dollar contracts from their pre-teens that turned the lives of this family of nine upside down, the parents having had five other children from previous unions.

Then the trajectories of the sisters diverged.

While Venus specialized in de facto on the grass at Wimbledon, where she won five times, Serena extended her dominance on all surfaces thanks to a simple tactic: take advantage of her incomparable power to strike as early and as hard as possible and win. by KO.

No question of being drawn into long exchanges where his kilos of muscles end up being heavy to bear.

His weapons?

The serve, sometimes hit at over 200 km/h, and the forehand.

Confidence too.

She is convinced that when she plays her best tennis, no one can beat her.

But the accidents of life have not always allowed him to express himself.

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In 2003-2004, she was absent eight months after knee surgery.

Even if she was then only 21 years old, it was doubted that she would play tennis again, seeming monopolized by other centers of interest, fashion or television.

Tragedy

In 2010 she slashed her feet stepping on broken glass, then in March 2011 a pulmonary embolism nearly claimed her life.

Her setbacks, and especially the tragedy that struck her family in September 2003 when her half-sister Yetunde was shot dead in Los Angeles, made her more human in the eyes of the public, some of whom were tired of seeing her win.

A few months before, she had been whistled at Roland-Garros, she who has always said her love for Paris, where she has an apartment.

These people did not imagine that ten years later, trained by the Frenchman Patrick Mouratoglou, she would express herself in the language of Molière on the center court.

At the head of an immense record - 7 Australian Open, 3 Roland-Garros, 7 Wimbledon, 6 US Open, but also thirteen Grand Slam titles in doubles with his sister and four Olympic gold medals (one in singles , three in doubles) - Serena won her 23rd and last 'Major' in Australia in 2017. Since then, she has been chasing a 24th major title, in singles, which would equal her Court l'Australian's record, established between 1959 and 1975.

While some might have seen the birth of her first child in September 2017, after a complicated pregnancy and childbirth, as a sign of early retirement, the youngest of the Williams has on the contrary shown that her daughter Olympia was for her an additional motivation to want to inscribe his name in the history of tennis.

Returning to competition in March 2018, she regained her level and played four more finals, two at the US Open and two at Wimbledon, but in vain.

© 2022 AFP