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[Narrator] In the late 1990s, two sisters emerged
from out of nowhere to take the tennis world by storm.
[Cecil Harris] When these two girls came along
with so much confidence,
so much of a belief, who are black, they do not come
from a tennis background, people could sense
that tennis was changing.
[Narrator] The Williams sisters were a phenomenon,
and by the turn of the millennium,
younger sibling, Serena,
eclipsed her older sister, Venus, and began
to leave her rivals in the dust.
[Rick Macci] When Serena Williams...
when she was on her front foot
in your face, you had no chance.
[Julie Cart] She was different.
She was powerful.
She was really aggressive.
She mowed through the best players at the time.
[Caitlin Thompson] 2002 is really when Serena goes solo.
She's playing so amazingly and so far ahead of everybody else
that it is hard to ever really keep her in conversation
as the Williams sisters.
She's now just Serena Williams, or even just "Serena."
[Narrator] And where Serena's talent
was reinvigorating tennis,
her striking appearance both on and off the court
sent shockwaves through popular culture.
[Analis Bailey] She's Serena Williams.
She is more than an athlete.
She can design clothes for fashion week.
She can wear what she wants to wear and inspire other people.
[Merlisa Lawrence Corbett] Serena was telling people,
you can be strong and feminine.
You can be beautiful, but you are still out there
to kick butt.
She had become her own celebrity outside of sports,
and people knew her name everywhere.
[Narrator] Having overcome antagonism
both within the tennis establishment
and across the wider media, after a period of decline,
Serena returned stronger than ever.
[Analis Bailey] It's Serena against the world.
As she ages, it's going to keep getting better.
That decade-long period of her cranking out these titles
is unprecedented.
[Narrator] This is the story of Serena Williams'
remarkable journey from a Compton prodigy
to a global icon.
[Rick Macci] I think she's the greatest athlete of all time,
in all sports.
What she's done and the ripple and the cascade,
this is what dreams are made of.
You cannot make this stuff up.
♪
[Narrator] September 2022.
Fans arrive in Flushing Meadows, New York,
for the US Open Tennis Championships.
And this year, there is a bittersweet mood as crowds
will witness the end of a remarkable era.
Having revealed in a Vogue Magazine interview
that she's stepping away from the sport, Serena Williams,
often credited as the greatest player of all time
is entering her final tournament.
40 years old and ranked 605th in the world, she has made
a surprise return from an injury that looked
set to end her career.
But Serena is retiring on her own terms.
Serena Williams's final US Open appearance coming on
as it did the heels of this announcement in Vogue
that she was evolving away from the game of tennis,
I think gave everybody in the sport a real moment
to kind of grapple with the enormity of her legacy.
[cheering]
Being in the stadium as she played those last couple matches
and had those last couple of victories was a real gift.
[Narrator] The mood is both celebratory and downbeat.
Tennis fans lament the end of a monumental career,
but also acknowledge the full impact of Serena's historic
accomplishments both on and off the court.
She is not only the embodiment and the actual demonstration
of the American dream, but she is inspiring to all those
who aspire to something like that.
She's a legend as far as sports goes, not only as just
an athlete but a female, and then on top of that,
a black female as well.
Someone that has been impacted heavily by black females
as far as my mothers and aunts, and now I have daughters,
I just thought it was important to witness
and be a part of history.
[Narrator] Having emerged as a distinct outsider at the close
of the 20th century, she has helped to transform
both tennis and popular culture itself in the 21st.
[Analis Bailey] Everything she did
and everything she accomplished
set the tennis world up to keep wanting to strive for more.
[Cecil Harris] Serena did more to change women's tennis
than anyone else.
The young players who are emerging today are part
of that legacy because many of them will tell you
they're only playing tennis because they saw
Serena Williams.
[Caitlin Thompson] She's brought this wave of people into tennis.
And by people, I don't necessarily mean women
or people of color, although yes, but just made it
so much more in conversation with the larger culture.
Tennis had gotten very stale and corporate and white and male,
and what Serena brought to tennis, especially
as the late 90's turned into the 2000s and the 2010s,
and she really hit her peak where she is going
for the Serena Slam, which is a number of slams in a row,
getting gold medals, appearing
on fashion covers, going down runways,
learning different languages.
She just became so enormous as a cultural force.
She reignited the imaginations of what tennis could be.
[Narrator] But her journey to become such a towering
cultural figure was not without its obstacles.
Her struggle to be recognized as one of the greatest
American athletes of all time, a testament to her tenacity
and her endurance.
And few could have foreseen how revelatory she would become
when her story in the public eye first began
almost 30 years beforehand.
♪
Los Angeles, 1994.
The word is out on the West Coast tennis circuit
that a prodigiously talented young black player has emerged,
making waves in the lower levels of the game.
Her name is Venus Williams.
[Julie Cart] I kept hearing about Venus Williams.
I live in Los Angeles, they're from Los Angeles.
It was a rumor or someone who was talked about,
and there was a tournament in San Francisco
that Venus played in, an indoor tournament,
and was a huge sensation.
Everything about her was different and interesting.
She was just very, very good.
[Cecil Harris] When Venus made her debut in 1994, that's what
really got me interested in tennis.
I'd covered some US Opens, but I was not
emotionally invested in the sport.
There was no one who really captured my imagination
until I saw the 14-year-old Venus.
That was because of her talent and because of her father,
Richard Williams, basically saying, "My daughter
is going to be the best player in the world,"
and people thought he was nuts.
[Narrator] The outlandish claims of Venus's father and coach,
Richard Williams, helped to quickly push his daughter
into the media spotlight.
But it soon emerged that Venus wasn't the whole story,
as Richard also announced that she had a younger sibling,
Serena, who he believed would eventually
eclipse her older sister.
[Julie Cart] The Serena drumbeat came from Richard Williams,
who said, "I have this great daughter Venus.
"She's fabulous.
"You ain't seen nothing yet.
Wait till you see the second one."
[Cecil Harris] I got to interview Richard Williams.
He said, "Serena's going to be even better."
I said, "Why?" "Two reasons," he said.
"Serena understands angles better
and the second thing is she's meaner."
Serena will probably be a better player than Venus.
Uh, that's not to compare my girls, but she will be.
And her main strength, Serena, she's just like a pit bull.
She wants to tie in on you, she wants you real bad.
And if you get a player that enjoys the battle like she does,
that's what you're looking for.
She has every quality that you would see in Mr. Jimmy Connors,
someone who just really wants to do it.
And that's Serena's strength.
He talked about her and he was like an old-time huckster.
He was like, "Step right up. I got a great kid coming up!"
And you wanted to roll your eyes because he was a bit
of a bombastic person.
But no one had seen her at a tournament.
But when she busted out, she busted out.
[Narrator] And that eventually happened in Chicago
for the 1997 Ameritech Cup.
Only 16 years old and ranked 304th in the world,
Serena Williams beat world number seven, Mary Pierce,
and number four, Monica Seles.
And the whole tennis world suddenly stood up
and took notice.
[Julie Cart] It was an announcement if there
ever needed to be,
and the way the sport is run, you have the capacity
to just zoom up the rankings, especially when you
beat really high-ranked players.
So that didn't last long, that whole idea of she's only
seeded or ranked 300th in the world. Ha ha.
I can assure you no one took her lightly after that.
No one.
[Narrator] But as the talent of both Williams sisters
became clear, they were not welcomed with open arms
by the tennis establishment.
Their sudden appearance on the professional circuit
was a challenge to the conventions of the sport.
What really, to me, is so notable about Venus and Serena
is that they didn't come up through the USTA,
the United States Tennis Association, which is our
governing body here in the US.
It's the largest of them all.
It was conventional wisdom that the USTA would be the pathway
to becoming a professional tennis player.
It cannot be overstated, the fact that the Richard Williams,
the father of Venus and Serena, did not allow his daughters
to play any of the USTA tournaments at all.
[Julie Cart] Basically, they were being prepped and prepared
for the professional game.
So they were leapfrogging over the junior tennis circuit
and all that that entails.
This is where you learn the tennis etiquette,
or so-called etiquette.
This is where you make friends, this is where promoters
get to see you.
So the discussion was less about these very talented
young players and aren't we excited about seeing them
and isn't it interesting?
And it was more about who the hell are they to not take
the path that you're supposed to take?
[Caitlin Thompson] That actually was the revolutionary
and amazing thing about all of them,
is they completely bucked the system.
And so I think for that reason, it made their appearance
on the scene in the late 90s when they're playing
and winning against established tour professionals
that much more controversial, that much more exciting,
because nobody had really gotten a look at them.
[Narrator] Yet in the conservative world of tennis,
everything about the Williams sisters was unconventional.
Their father, Richard Williams, a security guard attracted to
get-rich-quick schemes, was not a tennis player himself,
yet a chance viewing of a 1978 Grand Slam final
led him to look at the sport as a potential
business opportunity.
And although his partner, Oracene, already had
three children from a previous marriage, Richard saw this
as a plan for the future.
He was watching TV on a Sunday afternoon.
He just happened to see a tennis tournament that was won
by a Romanian player named Virginia Ruzici,
and she got a $40,000 check.
He said, "Wait a minute.
She only had to play a week?
She won this tournament, she got $40,000."
Basketball was not an option.
There were great female basketball players
who couldn't make a living.
Golf, there was a women's professional golf league,
but they didn't have the big purses.
So Richard was astute enough to look at this sports landscape
and say, "Tennis is the sport."
[Merlisa Lawrence Corbet] He started planning
before they were born.
He told Oracene that he was going to have these champions,
he wrote a 75-page business plan.
He even had some of Oracene's older daughters playing tennis,
but it wasn't until he had Venus and Serena.
It was like this plan that he had for them
before they were born, before she was even carrying them.
[Narrator] Initially raised in Long Beach, California,
in 1983, when Venus and Serena
were still toddlers, Richard moved
the family to Compton, just south of Los Angeles.
And this was also part of the plan,
although the public courts
where he would train his daughters were far removed
from the upper crust country clubs
of the established tennis world.
Compton was a rough neighborhood in southern California.
[Merlisa Lawrence Corbet] It had been an affluent
white community, then it became
an affluent black community, and then there was crime.
And then with gangster rap, with NWA, some of those groups,
they made the reputation that everything's about gang culture,
gangster rap, and that's the kind of reputation
it had when Venus and Serena were young.
[Cecil Harris] Richard thought that it would toughen up
Venus and Serena
if they lived in an area where you basically
have to hold on to everything.
No one's going to give you anything, and you have
to really fight for everything you get.
And if you can emerge from an area like Compton,
you'll be mentally tougher than these other players
you're going to compete against.
So it was Richard's idea that Compton would toughen them up.
[Narrator] And for six years, Richard dedicated himself
to coaching his daughters on the run down courts of Compton,
but knowing he could only take them so far,
in 1990, he contacted Florida-based tennis coach
Rick Macci and invited him to California to assess Serena
and Venus's potential and consider taking
them under his wing.
[Rick Macci] I'm checking them out technically, arms, legs,
hair, beads, flying off their head.
And right then and there, I'm going, "What in God's name
am I doing in Compton, California on a Saturday?"
They weren't any better, any worse than stuff
I see all the time at my camp for that age.
So then I said, "Let's play competitive points."
The whole landscape changed.
When I said "game on," I never saw two little girls
try so hard in my life.
There was a rage.
There was a rage inside both these girls I never saw.
That was just insane.
Right then and there I went up to Richard.
After I saw this, I said, "Richard, come here.
You got the next female Michael Jordan on your hands."
He puts his arm around me and he goes, "No, brother man.
I got the next two."
[Narrator] In the summer of 1991, the Williams family
bid farewell to the streets of Compton
and headed for the beatific coastal city
of Delray Beach, Florida, to train with Rick Macci.
Having previously coached teen sensation, Jennifer Capriati,
who had turned pro at 13 years old and later
became world number one, at his elite tennis
academy, Macci now turned his attention to transforming
Serena and Venus into champions.
[Macci]I was there for one reason, for Venus and Serena.
I was on a mission.
It wasn't about Richard, it wasn't about Rick Macci.
I knew where this was going to go.
They both were just such amazing competitors.
They expected to win.
Two of the mentally strongest players ever.
And let's face it, that's what separates great from good,
is the mental part.
But I saw that early on or I'm telling you right now,
I would've never took the chance.
[Narrator] And although Macci's primary focus was on
older sister Venus who would turn professional first,
Richard Williams saw even greater raw potential
in his younger daughter.
[Macci]Serena was a little prankster, messing around,
happy-go-lucky.
But he always told me even at nine,
Serena was going to be better, and I couldn't see it.
He just said, "Wait til she matures."
Besides the speed, the quickness.
You knew she was going to be big and strong and fast.
Serena not only checked every box, she added a few more
of her own, you know?
[Narrator] After three years of intensive training, in 1994,
Venus turned professional and entered her first competition,
immediately making an impact.
The following year, 14-year-old Serena was ready to join her.
With Rick Macci turning down the opportunity to train
the sisters exclusively, they were now back
with their father, Richard, and without the keen eye
of a professional coach.
But they could not have chosen a better time to emerge
as women's tennis was going through an evolution.
[Caitlin Thompson] In the late 90s, you really had the very end
of the Steffi Graf era.
When I was growing up, Steffi Graf and her 22 Grand Slams,
her Golden Slam, winning all four slams in a year
and the gold medal, was seen as just an incredible feat.
By the late 90s, it was an interesting transition moment.
As my friend, Mary Carillo, called it, 'Big Babe Tennis'
was the prevalent style.
You had Lindsay Davenport, you had Jennifer Capriati,
you had people who could just hit massive
ground strokes off the ground.
And Venus and Serena, because they had practiced
largely with each other for so many years, and both of them
had an incredibly aggressive
ground-stroke game, they fit in just right.
[Narrator] While Venus started strongly, when Serena debuted
in the 1995 Quebec Bell Challenge, she lost
in the qualifying rounds.
But the media was already intrigued by the sisters
and their bombastic father.
Soon, Venus reached the final of the 1997 US Open
in her first Grand Slam season, while in the same year,
Serena, was making headlines for her remarkable run
at the Ameritech Cup in Chicago.
As they faced each other in a Grand Slam
for the first time in the 1998 Australian Open
and appeared together in the pages of Vogue Magazine,
it was clear that the Williams sisters
were becoming a phenomenon.
Venus steps on the scene, her little sister
wants to come up and be just like her.
Her little sister wants to excel as quick as she is.
They're each other's biggest cheerleaders, but they
could be each other's biggest competitors.
[Merlisa Lawrence Corbett] People were fascinated
with them in general,
particularly since Richard Williams would come
to tournaments with his little signs.
"Welcome to the Williams Show."
They're both great players, yet it was treated
as though they were an entry, Venus and Serena.
[Julie Cart] They were the Williams sisters.
I said it, everyone wrote it.
They are very different people.
But that was our shorthand, that was our laziness,
to refer to them that way.
[Narrator] Adding to their image as "The Williams Sisters",
indivisible from each other was their success
playing together as a team.
Where Serena failed to make her mark
on the singles competitions of 1998, in 1999,
she and Venus won their first Grand Slam title
for Women's Doubles at the French Open.
But this would also be the year in which Serena
made a breakthrough of her own.
In September 1999, aged only 17, she fought her way
to the final of the US Open.
And there, facing world number one, Martina Hingis,
she won her historic first Grand Slam title.
[Julie Cart] When a young player reaches a final
of a major tournament
and then wins it, sometimes you look at the draw
and say, boy, were they ever lucky.
So-and-so pulled out and this person was up all night.
No.
She mowed through the best players at the time.
[Caitlin Thompson] 1999, Serena Williams
shows up at the US Open.
She plays Kim Clijsters, Conchita Martinez, Monica Seles,
Lindsay Davenport, and Martina Hingis.
That is a murder's row of women.
And tennis, you can't help but play the people in front of you.
Not all the time does the best player
in the draw win the tournament.
That said, when Serena Williams won a tournament,
you could almost guarantee that she was the best person
in the draw, and it started real early in her first slam.
[crowd cheers]
[Announcer] Game, set and the championship, Serena Williams.
The US Open is a unique beast. It's very loud.
She was really embraced by that group.
Of course, she's an American playing in an American
tournament, but her ethos-- New Yorkers would like that.
She's a winner.
She's an I don't care, I'm just going to go do
what I'm going to do, and she just had an attitude.
At the time, that was a big deal especially for a woman,
and especially for a black woman.
[Narrator] To add to the accolades, the Williams sisters
were also crowned champions of the women's doubles
at the same tournament.
As Serena ended 1999 as world number four, with Venus
one place above her, it was becoming clear
that their powerful, aggressive style might make
a seismic impact on the sport itself.
Serena's US Open Win was just the first
major step toward that.
[Merlisa Lawrence Corbett] It was significant in that now
it is no longer talk.
They've won a title.
And they were so young that you just knew more was coming.
[Cecil Harris] Serena was a US Open champion,
Venus was a US Open finalist,
and people could sense that tennis was changing.
[Rick Macci] They changed the game with that style,
but more importantly, they bought in.
They wanted to attack you, they wanted to hurt you.
They wanted to hit it hard.
But the wild card, the wildest of all the cards,
there's no fear.
They were bulletproof.
They weren't going to be afraid to pull the trigger.
They had courage on courage.
So when the fans are in the stands and when
it was time to do it, they weren't afraid.
[Narrator] Off the court too, Serena and Venus continued
to attract attention, stepping onto the red carpet
at premiers, attending award shows, and in September, 2000
appearing for the first time in Sports Illustrated.
They enthusiastically courted the media.
Yet on the professional circuit,
they were very different,
withdrawn, focused, and weary of the wider
tennis establishment.
The sisters were acutely aware of how dissimilar
they were from their fellow professionals.
[Merlisa Lawrence Corbett] The fascinating thing
about the Williams sisters
and Richard in terms of embracing the establishment
is they never wanted to.
They had each other and that mentality that we are
who we are in spite of what you think of us...
"what you think of me is none of my business" kind of attitude,
is why they were able to survive it.
Richard Williams basically told them, "Just talk to each other."
And Richard came to that conclusion because he saw
the way the other players would act
in junior tennis.
A lot of the players were spoiled basically.
A lot of these young players had a false sense
of entitlement because they come from money,
they come from means.
And Richard felt like to protect Venus and Serena,
they just need to rely on each other.
So don't go around the locker room getting involved
with what the other players are doing.
Talk to your sister, practice with your sister.
They played doubles together.
They often would play the same tournaments.
And that bond, I think, strengthened both of them.
[Narrator] And they needed the strength.
Their meteoric rise may have been celebrated
outside the tennis world, but within it,
they were still not fully embraced.
Two black teenagers in an elite,
predominantly white sport,
when Serena and Venus first appeared
on the professional circuit, they were questioned
about their vocal, aggressive playing style,
and the beads they wore in their hair.
And Venus, as the first to emerge,
faced particular scrutiny.
[Cecil Harris] It was something that Venus was questioned
about in sort of an accusatory way.
"Why are you wearing your hair like that in the first place?"
As if black women somehow have to conform
to what other women are doing.
When they had the beads, it was kind of old.
Most black women weren't wearing beads.
That was something that was fashionable in the 70s.
So it was odd for not just white people, but even
black people looking at, "Why are they
wearing these beads?"
But it was just something they liked to do.
[Julie Cart] They were different,
and it's understandable
because it is something that's unusual, but it took
so long to get over that.
And no one wanted to say, "Well, she's black."
That was not being discussed.
But I think that was the subtext.
[Narrator] But the backlash against the sisters
came to a head in early 2001
at the final of a tournament
held in the politically conservative city
of Indian Wells, California.
Indian Wells is the ugliest incident
I've ever seen in tennis.
[Julie Cart] Indian Wells. Wow.
This is a money-drenched tournament.
It's in a beautiful setting.
They call it the US Open of the west.
People who attend that have a lot of dough.
They're not from Compton.
They may not like people from Compton.
[Cecil Harris] Indian Wells and Compton
are almost light years apart.
So even though the Williams sisters were technically
at home in southern California, Indian Wells was not home.
[Narrator] Both Serena and Venus had progressed impressively
through the tournament and were headed
for a semifinal showdown.
But serious allegations of match fixing
against Richard Williams were already spreading
before the game began, fueled by Russian player,
Elena Dementieva.
These rumors were then strengthened when Venus
withdrew from the match against her sister through injury,
handing Serena a walkover to the final.
It came from the players, the gossips that they are,
"She's faking that because they don't want to play each other."
They had played each other so many times,
in consequential matches, so I don't buy that.
[Narrator] But the accusations had spread into public opinion.
On March 17th, 2001, Serena Williams stepped out
onto the court at Indian Wells to play for the title
against Belgian, Kim Clijsters, and the indignant crowd
immediately made their feelings known.
Here's the American, Serena, from Southern California,
against the Belgian, Kim Clijsters.
That entire crowd, predominantly white, more than 99% white,
they booed her.
When Richard Williams and Venus Williams took their seats
at courtside, they booed them. [crowd booing]
[Announcer] And there's father Richard coming down.
It's quite amazing.
Jo Jury alongside me, Simon Reed.
There's Venus.
And the crowd, an American crowd,
booing an American family.
And you have to say that it does smack of a little bit of racism.
[Julie Cart] There's film of Venus and Richard coming down
into the stadium.
They weren't without fans and supporters, but it just
was so overwhelming.
It was just this culmination of, we don't like them.
We're not sure why.
We're going to create a reason.
And it's the beads.
Okay, they're not wearing beads.
Well, they fix their matches.
It was always something that they couldn't
put their finger on when it's like, no, it's right out there.
You're just racist.
We have walkovers in tennis because people
withdraw so often.
It's just a part of the game.
So I don't know why they've thought, other than racism,
that it was okay to boo her like that because her sister
withdrew from a tournament.
[Narrator] And as the match began, the crowd's
hostility continued.
Every mistake she made, every error, was cheered
by an American crowd.
It was unprecedented in tennis.
[Merlisa Lawrence Corbet] The vitriol to Serena
was also hurtful to Kim Clijsters.
She seemed confused, her opponent, as to what's going on.
"Why are they booing this person? I'm Belgian."
They were both teenagers.
It was an ugly situation.
I think they both handled it beautifully,
and they remained friends.
It was the crowd, the grownups who were acting ridiculous.
[Narrator] And although Serena would triumph over this
homegrown adversity and ultimately win the match,
the ordeal made a significant impact on the teenager.
[Cecil Harris] She was gracious, she was strong.
She didn't let the crowd see how much they had hurt her.
But Serena has since said, on the drive away
from Indian Wells, she was crying in the car.
It hurt her that much.
But she didn't let the crowd see it.
[Narrator] In the aftermath of the event,
both Serena and Venus would boycott the tournament
for over a decade.
Yet beyond its impact on the sisters,
the Indian Wells debacle would prove a turning point,
a watershed moment in which the tennis world
was forced to confront its own innate prejudices.
From its very inception in late 18th century Britain,
the sport had been characterized
by its exclusivity,
a pastime for the privileged.
Tennis has had so many different eras.
It was obviously evolved as a lawn game
for rich elitists in their English gardens,
and this is dating back about a hundred years.
You could buy a set and set up your own court
in your backyard and really just have a sort of leisure game
between gin and tonics.
Tennis to me started getting really interesting in the 20s.
This is when you actually had your first couple
of female superstars.
This is Gussie Moran, this is Suzanne Lenglen,
women who transcended the sport and forced their way
in alongside your Renee Lacostes and other legends.
Tennis became this, certainly a little bit blue blood,
but a place for female success, which if you look
at other sports, was groundbreaking.
[Narrator] Although it was pioneering
in its embrace of women players,
this was still bound up in privilege;
the female athletes wealthy members of the same
social class as the men.
And as the game spread to Europe and then to America,
it remained an elite country club sport, with no access
for either the working classes or for people of color.
This led African-Americans to form their own
sports organization: The American Tennis Association.
And by the 1920s, it began to host its own tournaments.
Tennis was a deeply segregated sport when the ATA was formed,
and that's one reason it existed, because similar
to Negro League Baseball, there were outstanding
black baseball players who were not given a chance
to play Major League Baseball.
The same problem existed in tennis.
And the ATA had some wonderful players who unfortunately
never got a chance to play major tennis.
Ora Washington was one.
She won eight ATA singles championships
and combined with various partners to win
12 doubles championships.
She could well have become one of the all-time
great tennis players.
And maybe she was, but she's not known as such.
She's been largely forgotten by history because she didn't
get a chance to play.
[Narrator] And it was not until the 1950s that a black player
was finally given the opportunity to compete
in the major tennis tournaments.
Althea Gibson, who had honed her talents on the streets
of Harlem, became the leading female player in the ATA,
dominating the field and winning 10
straight singles titles.
But despite her towering reputation, she was still
unable to compete in the United States National Championships
solely because of her skin color.
It would take the intervention of a former world number one
to finally tackle the racial divide.
[Cecil Harris] A prominent white player named Alice Marble
heard about Althea, had not yet met her, but the name
was going around tennis circles.
Here's this black American woman who is very good
but is not being given a chance to play.
Alice broke the ice by writing a column in what was then
an influential publication, American Lawn Tennis Magazine,
and she put the tennis establishment to shame.
"How can we say tennis is the sport for ladies
"and gentlemen if we're not giving this young black woman
a chance to play?"
Football, baseball, basketball, where all desegregated.
Boxing had black champions like Joe Lewis and Jack Johnson.
So how could tennis call itself the sport for ladies
and gentlemen if we're denying Althea Gibson a chance
to prove what she can do against the best
tennis players in the world?
[Narrator] The tennis world was convinced by Marble's
stinging criticisms, and Althea Gibson's
subsequent entrance into the major
tennis tournaments finally broke through the segregation.
She would become the first black player to win Grand Slams
both at home and abroad, and a role model
for future generations, including Serena Williams.
She won the US Nationals twice, 1957 and 1958.
Won Wimbledon twice, 1957 and 1958.
Won the French Nationals in 1956.
And because Wimbledon is the premier tournament,
when she won her first Wimbledon title in 1957,
Queen Elizabeth presented her with the Venus Rosewater Dish,
the golden plate that the champion receives.
And when she came back to New York,
she was honored with a ticker-tape parade.
Althea got the kind of celebration that astronauts
returning from the moon would get, or the New York Yankees
winning the World Series
or the New York Giants winning the Super Bowl.
This was for a Black American woman who broke
the color barrier in her sport and was the first
Black major champion.
[Narrator] Yet despite this progressive leap forward,
Gibson's success did not prove
to be a catalyst for long-term change
in the tennis world.
Although Black stars would break through in the following
three decades, including the American, Arthur Ashe,
and Frenchman Yannick Noah, by the 1990s,
just before the Williams sisters arrived on the scene,
the sport remained a predominantly white affair.
[Julie Cart] If you want to look at that period
of time in the 90s,
one hand, you can name the black players.
Look at Zina Garrison, a Wimbledon finalist.
She could barely get sponsorship, could not
scrape up anybody who wants to pay her a dime,
and look how good she was.
When Zina Garrison reached the Wimbledon final in 1990,
the first black woman to reach a Wimbledon final
since Althea Gibson in 1958,
Zina was the only player in the top 10
in women's tennis who did not have
a clothing endorsement deal.
Zina ended up playing against Martina Navratilova
in the 1990 final wearing clothes that Martina gave her.
[Narrator] After so many years of black players
being underrepresented
and underappreciated, when the Williams sisters
arrived shortly afterwards, they brought the sport
to a tipping point.
The Indian Wells debacle was damning proof to many
that the deep-rooted prejudices of the conservative
tennis world desperately needed to adapt to the modern age.
And Serena and her sister, Venus, would ultimately
force that change to occur.
[Caitlin Thompson] The appearance of Venus
and Serena Williams on the scene
with their braids, their unapologetic style of play,
their family, it was hard to see how anything
other than what happened happened, as much
as it would pain me to say that.
We had had phenomenally successful players of color
preceding the appearance of the Williams sisters,
but really, nobody who took up as much space
as the Williams family.
And I think everything that made them a little bit anathema
to the conservative power structures in tennis,
the fact that they were loud, the fact
that they were unapologetic,
the fact that they played loud, flashy tennis and assumed
an amount of space, made them incredible tennis players.
And so for me, it's been very interesting to see not only
at the time the way the tennis world reluctantly,
but then inevitably made space
for Serena Williams in particular.
[Narrator] And if the tennis establishment proved reluctant
in accepting these rising stars, the wider public
was only too happy to embrace them.
Tennis viewership had been on the decline since its heyday
in the 1970s, with characters like John McEnroe
and Jimmy Connors replaced by more disciplined
athletes like Pete Sampras and Steffi Graf,
whose dispassionate, clinical playing styles
offered little on-court personality.
The Williams sisters were a breath of fresh air.
And when they faced each other in the final
of the 2001 US Open, audience numbers went through the roof.
Tennis should thank its lucky stars that those two came along.
Absolutely.
22 million people watching the final between the sisters
at the US Open.
You got to see them play, and wow, it's for real
and it's exciting.
[Merlisa Lawrence Corbett] Not only did Venus and Serena
bring more eyes,
they brought non-tennis fans to the game.
So you had people who didn't care about tennis,
never watched, they were tuning in to see these sisters.
It was unique.
They were young, they were hip.
[Rick Macci] Saturday night, prime time, US Open,
22 million people watching this.
It's one thing to have one play in the finals.
But you're playing your sister who lives in the same house
and you share the same bedroom, it's a whole different dynamic.
And the eyeballs they brought and the fascination
and the intrigue and the story.
[Announcer] Game, set and match. Venus Williams.
- Two sets to love: 6-3, 6-4. - And there it is.
[crowd cheers]
[Announcer] Venus Williams, the US Open champion
over younger sister, Serena Williams.
[Rick Macci] This is what dreams are made of.
You cannot make this stuff up.
[Narrator] And while both sisters were playing their part
in attracting record viewing figures, Serena's tough,
high voltage playing style and on-court persona,
were bringing drama back to the sport.
[Julie cart] Tennis was being left in the dust.
That whole sense of [mimicking] fair play, congratulations...
it's not contemporary, it's not interesting.
You want to see people bleed, you want to see their struggles.
You know the backstory, and I know that sounds
sort of artificial, but that's what is interesting to people.
Serena screams when she wins and she gets upset.
It's just her understanding of the sport
as an entertainment medium.
[Narrator] Serena was now firmly in the spotlight.
Between 1999 and 2001, she had rocketed
up the rankings to cement herself as a top 10 player.
And after years of high expectations,
2002 heralded a new era of dominance.
[Serena screams]
[Announcer] Game, set, match.
[Narrator] Winning eight of the 13 tournaments she entered,
Serena would beat her higher ranked sister
in three Grand Slam finals: the French Open,
Wimbledon, and the US Open, before defeating her again
in the Australian Open in January 2003,
becoming the first player since Steffi Graf to go
undefeated in Grand Slams in a single season
and finishing the year as world number one.
Soon, talk of the Williams sisters came to an end.
[Caitlin Thompson] 2002 is really when you get
separation between the two of them.
It's so hard not to lump them together just because
they're both so excellent, they're both
hitting number ones, they're both getting to finals.
But for me, 2002 is really when Serena goes solo.
It's not close and she's winning slam after slam after slam,
so much that they had a whole new term for her,
which is after winning Wimbledon, the French Open,
the US Open, and then the next year,
Australian Open, they called it the 'Serena Slam'.
To me, the fact that she's beating Jennifer Capriati
in 2002 in Miami, a fast, humid court and beating her sister
in the French Open, and then beating her sister
again at Wimbledon, it cannot be stated.
This is so crazy an achievement because of how diverse
the field and the surfaces are at this time.
[crowd cheers]
She is firing on all cylinders.
She's got the peroxide blonde hair, she's got
the ponytail, she looks amazing and she's playing
so amazingly and so far ahead of everybody else that it
is hard to ever really keep her in the same
conversation as the Williams sisters.
She's now just Serena Williams, or even just Serena.
[Narrator] And it wasn't just her dominance
that was separating Serena
from both her sister and her contemporaries.
As her confidence as a player grew, so too
did her confidence to dress in eye-catching outfits.
And both on and off court, she began to experiment
with bold new styles and further break away
from tennis traditions.
In the early 2000s, Serena was sponsored by Puma.
They put her in the Cameroon colors and she wore
a jumper at the French Open with green shorts
and yellow trim with the high socks.
It's the greatest look that's ever been served.
Serena has never been afraid to make a fashion statement
on court, that's one of the things I admire about her.
She will come up with unique outfits that nobody else
would even dare to wear.
[Narrator] But in a sport known for etiquette and reserve,
one outfit in particular drew heavy criticism.
The black faux leather catsuit, which she debuted
at the US Open in 2002, clearly didn't hinder her path
to victory in that competition.
But where some press reports applauded her courage
and style, others used it as an opportunity
to deride Serena herself.
[Cecil Harris] One fashion critic from the Washington Post
called her catsuit trashy.
There were people likening her to looking like a street walker.
It was unique for tennis, it was what Serena
wanted to wear.
It was not trashy.
It was just different.
This happens a lot, beyond Serena Williams.
When black women decide to present themselves
in form fitting clothes, tight clothes,
it's automatically, "Oh, she's trying to be sexual."
"She's trying to show off her body."
And at the end of the day, she's just wearing
an athletic outfit that she can move freely in.
Now, was there backlash?
Absolutely.
It's form fitting.
Now you see her muscles and where she's toned,
you see her physique.
That can be intimidating for a lot of people, honestly.
But I mean, if I looked like that, I would be
in my skintight catsuit as well, and I love it.
[Narrator] And Serena wasn't content just to push boundaries
within the world of tennis.
Having enrolled at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale,
Florida, to study fashion back in 2000, her interest
in this industry was soon to play a central role
in her off-court career.
And in April 2003, she appeared in her first
solo Vogue shoot, confidently celebrating her physique
within a fashion world still obsessed
by a very different beauty standard.
The fashion industry always has been, always will be dominated
by size-zero models, but what was unique was not only
was Serena more muscular, but it was,
you're able to see women as strong and feminine.
Serena's body is obviously perfect for what she's doing,
but it is not the slender white vision of female beauty,
and it's yet another norm that she pushed through.
And instead of tiptoeing, she just said, "Ta-da."
[Narrator] Her appearance in Vogue came just at the point
that the cultural landscape itself was going
through a transformation.
While Serena had distinguished herself from Venus
in the public's consciousness and was stepping out
on her own.
Destiny's Child singer, Beyonce Knowles,
was also going solo and quickly emerging
as one of the biggest stars in the world.
Strong black women, previously so overlooked
by the gatekeepers of the mainstream media,
were suddenly in the driving seat.
It's really cool to see this new age of accepting black women
as the star of the show, black women being spotlighted.
Having curvy bodies, full-bodied women like Beyonce,
like Serena Williams, who are authentic in themselves,
were always around, but now we're starting to,
as the media, as the public, starting to embrace that,
and there is some liberation in that.
I think we have a long way to go, but it's cool to see, okay,
I'm black, my family's black.
I see these types of women all the time,
but now I'm seeing it in mainstream media.
Now I'm seeing it on magazine covers,
now I'm seeing it in commercials.
[Narrator] In December 2003, Serena signed
a $40 million deal with Nike,
at the time the largest endorsement contract
ever offered to a female athlete.
And this would propel her into the spotlight even further.
Attending red carpet premiers, high profile events,
and invited to New York's prestigious Met Gala in 2004,
Serena was no longer
a sports star, but had now become
an international celebrity.
And where the tennis community had initially shunned her,
the entertainment world welcomed her with open arms.
[Analis Bailey] The tennis world, you have this
predominantly white sport,
and then you have this colorful world of entertainment
and celebrity and culture.
So I think natural she was embraced and accepted
in that diverse space like a lot of people are,
like a lot of black athletes are.
Serena felt more at home with celebrity only because
celebrities loved Serena.
She is one of the few athletes who have celebrity groupies.
Celebrities embraced Serena because they were fangirling
on her and they wanted to meet her.
So that was a place where, on the tennis world,
she had a lot of adversaries, in the world of entertainment,
they embraced her, loved her.
So she had become like her own celebrity outside of sports,
and people knew her name everywhere.
[Narrator] But just as she had been elevated to the top tier
of popular culture, the tide turned, and Serena was hit
by a number of personal and professional crises.
In September 2003, her oldest half-sister
and personal assistant, Yetunde Price,
was shot and killed in Compton.
At the same time, her career began to be plagued
by significant injuries.
In 2004, she won only two minor titles.
And despite winning the Australian Open in 2005,
afterwards her form and her fitness
deteriorated once again.
While her career away from the court seemed healthy,
with acting roles in popular shows, Law and Order and ER,
her absence from the professional tour
saw her ranking slip ever downwards.
At the end of 2006, she was ranked number 96
in the world, and many tennis insiders felt she had become
too preoccupied with her life outside of sport.
[Interviewer] Are we going to see you on the big screen?
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
Very soon, very soon.
And how's the fashion life going?
Very good.
I'm really excited about everything.
[Cecil Harris] She was dabbling in acting, fashion design.
She was pulling herself in many different directions
and not focusing on tennis as much as she should have.
Success came so quickly, I think she believed,
"Okay, I've conquered the tennis world.
What else can I do?"
[Merlisa Lawrence Corbett] Emotionally, she was struggling
to deal with her sister's death.
And it wasn't just her sister's death, because her sister
also had two kids, and a lot of people don't realize
Venus and Serena went to court trying to win custody
of their niece and nephew.
So to be in your twenties and trying to win custody
of two little kids, and so when you have the emotional stuff
along with the injuries, that was a tough time.
[Narrator] But Serena was determined
not to lose her crown.
Her win at the 2007 Australian Open Final provided her
with a lifeline.
And the following year's victories at the Miami Masters
and a third US Open final set her on course
for a dramatic comeback.
Come on!
[Narrator] And that was to happen in 2009,
when she won in Australia
yet again before beating her sister to claim
her third Wimbledon title. [crowd gasps]
But rather than return full-time to the WTA Tour,
Serena had selected the tournaments in which
she would compete, careful to avoid further injury.
It proved a hugely successful strategy, and by the end
of 2009, she was world number one yet again.
Even in being a little bit more detached from the game,
she ended up being incredibly impactful because what she did
was start cherry-picking her season.
She wouldn't play all the mandatory tournaments.
In fact, when she needed to play a mandatory tournament
and it wasn't going to coincide with her schedule
for whatever reason, she would gladly pay the fine.
That actually ended up creating a trend where athletes
created their own schedules, had their own swings,
and we've seen it basically ever since.
It's amazingly vindicating to think about the amount of times
Serena was written off, especially as she aged.
And I think for me, it proved that this really
would only be over when she wanted it to be.
And whenever she decided that the game was hers
for the taking, she made it happen.
[Narrator] And despite still suffering
from intermittent injuries,
including a life-threatening pulmonary embolism,
and drifting up and down the rankings while in recovery,
from 2010, Serena began to compete
at the top level once again.
Now approaching her thirties, she nevertheless was able
to focus on those aspects of her game that helped her
to dominate her opponents.
And the most powerful of these attributes was her serve,
which she had been developing since her youth.
[Rick Macci] Even before I got involved, her throwing motion,
biomechanically, was correct.
It was natural.
Venus wasn't.
She was more disjointed.
But Serena, her natural motion was like, whoa.
It was like a quarterback just throwing
a tight spiral, the motion.
And I kept telling her, the toss, it's like
you have an egg in your hand.
Put the egg on the shelf, egg on the shelf.
Fast-forward, the best serve ever in women's tennis.
Her attitude was always: think big, go bigger,
expect to hit an ace.
It wasn't like, just get it in, like it was in the 80s
and early 90s.
So the mindset was there.
But her serve, Serena's serve, poetry in motion,
a knife through butter, but there's an assassin
with a racket in her hand just wanting to hit that ball
as hard as she could.
When it was break point or when she needed it,
it's that Compton Street fight, that she could go deep inside,
the bigger the moment, that's what separates
great from good.
[grunts]
Bang! She would get that serve in when she needed it.
[Narrator] And alongside her serve, another aspect
of her game that Serena used to diminish her opponents
was her ability to volley at the net.
[Caitlin Thompson] Serena has baseline shots
that are as good, if not better,
than anyone else who's ever played the game,
but her net game is elite.
Again, not very many people, especially women,
emphasize so much net play, and it is easy to forget,
but important to remember how many titles she won,
usually alongside her sister, but also in mixed doubles.
She's an elite doubles player.
[Narrator] And where the media devoted untold column inches
in praise of her power and her physical dominance,
often less appreciated was her on-court intelligence.
[Julie Cart] Her strength is her brain, her mindset, and the fact
that she has a very strong will.
You do not get to where she is, and stay there,
that's the main thing, you don't stay there unless you have
some just monumental determination,
self-belief, resilience.
She just has a will.
[Caitlin Thompson] Every single match Serena has ever contended,
she expects to win.
And for a large part of her career, so did her opponents.
And you can't overstate how tough it is to go out
against an opponent who's already essentially
beaten you, broken your spirit, made you not believe.
You have to beat her, because she's certainly
not going to beat herself.
That's a big deal.
[Narrator] All of these attributes would come
to the fore as Serena strived to regain
her winning form in 2010.
After her years in the wilderness, she was up against
a renewed field of competitors, some of whom she was facing
for the first time.
Yet up until this point, her injuries had caused her
more concern than her opponents.
[Caitlin Thompson] Serena had really few rivals.
At the beginning of her career, her sister proved
to be a frequent sparring partner.
She had some interesting matches against Steffi Graf
or Martina Hingis.
But really, for her prime, there was almost nobody
who could hold a candle to her.
[Julie Cart] You don't look back at Serena's career and say,
oh, she played so-and-so 48 times, and it was 24-24.
It's not like that and it's not like the attenuated rivalry
that Martina Navratilova had with Chris Evert,
where they brought out the best in each other.
I think that there were sharp, pointed moments when people
played well against Serena, kind of, figured her out,
or she may have had something going on, and they won.
But I don't think there was someone where she said,
"Ugh, man, this is going to be a tough one."
[Narrator] But at the start of her comeback trail in 2007,
she had faced an opponent who repeatedly stood in her way.
The Belgian, Justine Henin, had defeated her
in the quarterfinals of three Grand Slams
during that season, the French Open, Wimbledon,
and the US Open, and proved a major obstacle
in Serena's goal to get back to the top.
[Caitlin Thompson] At her peak, she could take the fight
to Serena because she and Serena had very different games.
Justine Henin is one of the few people who was bold enough,
and she's not big, she's only 5'5, to stand inside
the baseline on a Serena Williams serve just in
the effort to take it early and try to dictate the point
before Serena would get the chance.
So from a tennis perspective, she's in my mind
the closest that Serena had to a consistent rival.
[Narrator] In 2008, Henin had briefly retired.
But in January 2010, with Serena looking to return
to form and dominate the field, she faced Henin once again
at the final of the Australian Open.
It would prove a key match in Serena's resurgence.
Justine Henin was coming back, trying to decide
whether she was going to retire, and she was at the time
the only real competition for Serena,
consistent competition.
[crowd cheers]
To beat her and send her back into retirement was like
Serena saying, "No, I'm in charge now.
I'm here to stay."
So I think that was her sending the message to the field,
that "I'm back for good now."
[Narrator] But as Serena moved into the second chapter
of her career,
there was one other rival on her radar.
And Russian player, Maria Sharapova, was competing
with her both on and off the court.
Having entered the professional circuit just as Serena's form
had started to decline, in 2004, Sharapova
had caused an upset when as the 13th seed,
she defeated the defending champion
at the Wimbledon final.
Although Serena had been gracious in defeat,
the tennis world's sudden embrace of Sharapova
after the game was a shock.
There were people in the sport hoping someone else
would come along to take over from the Williams sisters.
And Maria didn't exactly take over, she just beat Serena
in a big upset in 2004, and people ran with that.
"Oh, Maria is the next big thing now."
Nike gave Maria Sharapova a more lucrative endorsement deal
than the one Serena had because Maria won that match.
And I'm sure that got to Serena as well, because Serena
had done so much more.
Being 17 and upsetting Serena, that puts Sharapova on the map.
She's the new darling.
And even though she's Russian, she was a darling in the US too.
All of the money just started pouring into Sharapova.
She'd won one tournament against an injured Serena Williams,
but oh, she's better.
And she's blonde and she's tall.
So it was this weird transition for Serena during that time.
[Narrator] And during Serena's years of struggle and absence,
Sharapova had not only proven one of the best players
in the game, but had eclipsed her as the face
of women's tennis.
[Merlisa Lawrence Corbett] To have a good rivalry,
the other person has to be at the top too.
And Sharapova was at the top, she was dominating
when Serena was out.
And then, so when Serena came back strong, this is the person
she had to beat.
[Caitlin Thompson] A lot of the years that both Serena Williams
and Maria Sharapova were active, Maria Sharapova,
despite having a whisper of Serena Williams
tennis resume, especially head-to-head,
bested Serena Williams in money endorsements.
Canon, Porsche, Evian, the list goes on and on.
She was really out-earning Serena by such a large margin
that I think it enraged Serena and made her play
even better tennis, because an angry
Serena Williams tends to be a focused
Serena Williams, and that's not who you want to see
on the other side of the court.
[Narrator] And in 2012, on the back of winning
her fifth Wimbledon singles title,
a resurgent Serena faced off
against Maria Sharapova once again.
The occasion was momentous, the final
of the London Olympics, with the victor set to receive
a coveted gold medal.
And Serena made sure that there was only one winner.
Serena's most dominant performance came against Maria
in the 2012 gold medal match in the Olympics.
It was held at Wimbledon that year on center court.
And Serena smoked Maria 6-0, 6-1.
[Merlisa Lawrence Corbett] It was just stunning,
that match.
Serena was better than her in every aspect of the game.
I don't think she's ever played cleaner, more decisive tennis.
[crowd cheers]
Serena was just teeing off on her second serve.
It was like batting practice.
[screams]
[Cecil Harris] And there was something about the image
of Serena standing highest
on the podium as the gold medal winner
and Maria below her as a silver medalist,
and the look on Serena's face.
Like, the whole world sees this, and this is the pecking order
as it should be. [laughs]
[Narrator] The following year, 2013, Serena finally
made her way back to the very top.
Becoming the oldest female world number one
at nearly 32 years old, this second chapter of her career
would prove even more successful than the first.
Yet Serena had also been looking
for new impetus and inspiration,
and this drew her away from her father Richard
toward French coach, Patrick Mouratoglou.
[Merlisa Lawrence Corbett] 2013, that's the year
I think was Serena's best year.
And it was also her first full year after teaming up
with the coach, Patrick Mouratoglou.
Because in 2012 at Wimbledon, that's the first time
he coached her.
That was also the last time Richard Williams
was in the player's box at a Grand Slam, 2012.
He never showed up again in the player's box.
And it was almost like that transition from
Serena's now her own person.
She became a lot more strategic in how she approached
the matches and about chasing records.
Before, I don't think she cared.
[Narrator] And those records were soon within her sights.
Serena entered the 2013 season with 16 major singles titles
to her name, two behind Chris Evert
and Martina Navratilova, and four behind Steffi Graf,
the record holder in the open era with 22 titles.
Back on form and once again dominating the field,
Serena won the US and French Opens, and then in 2014
completed a record-equaling third US Open
win-in-a-row to draw level with fellow Americans Evert
and Navratilova.
And with this victory, she also earned the highest
single paycheck in the history of tennis for winning
the US series of titles within a single calendar year.
Where once Serena had been viewed with skepticism
by the American tennis establishment,
now she was its greatest asset.
For what Serena was being rewarded with in 2014,
I think that was a pivotal moment in shifting the tide.
Serena and her sister carried the banner for American tennis,
and they did it for decades.
Because, still, no American man has won a major tennis title
since Andy Roddick in 2003.
That means an entire generation of tennis fans has not seen
any American man hold up a major tennis trophy.
But they've seen Serena do it many times.
The Williams sisters really didn't change.
America changed.
After a while, American tennis fans said,
"We don't have any reason to dislike them.
Why don't we root for Serena?"
Now, we were hearing Serena mentioned in the conversation
about the GOATs of sports, the greatest of all time:
Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Pele, Wayne Gretzky, Tom Brady.
Serena's name was being included, and it was
the first time that a great female athlete
was getting that kind of respect.
[Narrator] And while Serena was commanding that respect
and breaking records in the tennis world, her schedule
was not limited to sport.
Two days after winning the US Open,
she took to the stage
at another New York tradition, New York Fashion Week,
debuting her Serena Williams runway collection
in front of a star-studded crowd.
Where critics had once doubted that she could juggle
her on- and off-court activities,
now Serena was proving
that she could excel at both.
[Analis Bailey] 2014, you have this runway collection
by Serena Williams.
Lots of bold colors, lots of leopard prints
and blazers and leather.
It was fun, it was different, it was unique.
This era, and it's still going on today, of celebrity athletes
building their brand is something that Serena
kind of fell into so well.
[Narrator] And having ended 2014 on a high, in 2015,
Serena's winning streak continued, with victories
at both the Australian Open and the French Open.
In July, she traveled to Wimbledon.
Here, the tennis world was buzzing once again
as the prospect of a victory in the singles competition
would see her complete a second historic Serena Slam.
It is a huge incentive for me.
I did it before in Australia, which was pretty cool,
so I've held all four in a row.
So I keep thinking about that.
"Serena, if it doesn't happen, you've already done it,
so don't be disappointed in yourself."
But at the same time, I'm here to win Wimbledon,
I'm not here to win the Serena Slam.
I'm not here to focus on winning the Grand Slam.
I'm just here to win Wimbledon or do the best I can
at Wimbledon and see what happens after that.
That's all I can do.
[Narrator] And Serena's best proved enough
to secure her a victory in the final.
With this win, she not only achieved
her second Serena Slam,
but she also became the oldest female in the open era
to win a major singles title.
And she was now only one behind Steffi Graf's record
of 22 Grand Slams.
[Cecil Harris] The comeback was complete.
She had lost her way for a few years, she was determined
to get it back.
And she got her groove back.
[Rick Macci] It just shows how she loves to play.
She loves to kick butt and take names.
This is a competitor.
It wasn't about the money.
I mean, she had all the money.
She had all the fame and fortune.
It was about: she loved to compete.
To me, this is like legacy building stuff.
All rivals have pretty much fallen out of contention.
She's winning as much as she can, as much as she wants to.
You start looking at the Steffi Graf record.
Oh, wow, Steffi Graf was so dominant, she got 22 slams,
but nobody will ever get that.
And then all of a sudden in the mid-teens, it just becomes
another goal or record that Serena can get in her sights.
And you start thinking, oh, she's going to end up
with more than Steffi Graf, isn't she?
[Narrator] Yet there would be obstacles in her path.
A new generation of players were emerging who would offer
fresh challenges.
And in 2016, Serena was defeated in the finals of both
the Australian Open and the French Open, the first time
she had suffered back-to-back losses
in Grand Slam finals.
Once again, this brought the drama to Wimbledon
in July, 2016, where she was reigning champion
and the number one seed.
Here she progressed to the final where she faced
Angelique Kerber, a German player very much in form.
[Merlisa Lawrence Corbett] She was playing Kerber
who had just beat her
at the Australian Open, and Kerber was probably
one of her better competitors at the time.
And Serena, sometimes when she's trying to reach a milestone,
she gets tight and she would get nervous in knowing
time is running out.
That was a great match.
Kerber did not cower.
Serena had to beat her.
[both grunting]
[Announcer] Game, set, match. Serena Williams.
14 years after that first victory here,
Grand Slam number 22.
Irresistible, majestic.
And the judgment of history will surely be that she was
in a class of her own.
I think it was significant because it's like now
you're at 22, that's off my back.
I am trying to tie Graf.
And it's like, now I'm in that GOAT discussion.
And they would put Margaret Court up there, but everybody
knew Graf was really the target.
So it's like now I can best Graf.
That was a big deal.
[Narrator] Having equaled graph's open era record,
some tennis insiders did start to raise
the 24 Grand Slam wins of Australian champion
Margaret Court, who had dominated the sport
in the 1960s.
Yet Court had played before the open era,
when tennis tournaments were amateur-only events.
And many of her wins were at the Australian Open itself,
which failed to attract the world's top players
as it was so expensive to travel to.
Yet ironically, it was at the Australian Open in 2017
that Serena finally passed Steffi Graf's
Grand Slam record.
The final itself was historic.
When both of the Williams sisters stepped
onto center court at the Rod Laver Arena to do battle,
it was their first meeting at a Grand Slam final
since 2009, and their first in Australia since 2003.
Venus, now 36, was the oldest woman finalist
at the Australian Open ever, and the contest
took their story full circle.
20 years after they had first emerged, the Williams sisters
were still competing at the top level of their sport.
Serena's eventual victory saw her crowned
world number one yet again.
And unbeknownst to the spectators, she had
achieved this win while eight weeks pregnant.
The significance of passing Graf, it's like
now there's no question.
The whole point of Margaret Court
didn't become a thing until after Serena passed Graf.
I'm like, nobody really thinks that she's the greatest.
I think that was just this barrier that people put in place
to put another hurdle over Serena, but Graf was really
the standard to beat.
And I think that winning that, I felt like Serena, not only
was she pregnant, but felt like, hey, I can leave the game now.
I got 23. I got 23, that's the one.
Not that she didn't want to get Margaret Court, but I think
that 23, that's the one she wanted.
It was about passing Graf.
[Narrator] In April 2017, Serena publicly announced
her pregnancy with her partner,
the entrepreneur, Alexis Ohanian.
Stepping back from the limelight and resting
at her home in West Palm Beach, Florida,
for the rest of the year
she disappeared from the professional circuit.
Following a difficult labor that saw Serena suffer
another life-threatening pulmonary embolism,
on September 1st, the couple's daughter,
Alexis Olympia, was born.
And despite being hospitalized for six weeks after the birth,
by the end of the year, Serena was back
in training once again.
And in 2018, she returned to competitive tennis.
[Julie Cart] You can't pin Serena down.
There's no narrative that stays static with her.
So...African American, oh, how different.
She plays differently, she's really tough and strong.
Look what she's wearing.
And now she's a mom, she's married, she has a little kid
and she almost died during childbirth.
It's yet another part of her story, and she's let people in
under her own terms, and she has a kind of integrity and I think
it's really, really compelling.
[Analis Bailey] Again, if you see her, you can be her
and it's like, yeah,
I can be a mother and I can have a career.
I can be a mother and I could still be a role model.
I can be a mother and I can still excel and be the best
at whatever I'm doing in my career or otherwise.
Her becoming a mother, her having her daughter
just made her that much more relatable,
that much more inspirational.
[Narrator] Serena was back in the spotlight
with motherhood boosting her profile even further.
In May 2018, she and her husband, Alexis,
were prominent guests at her friend Meghan Markle's wedding
to Prince Harry.
And the following year, she was a co-host at the Met Gala,
the fashion world's most prestigious annual event.
And while the celebrity world enthusiastically embraced
her return, the tennis world was even keener to see her
back in the draw.
And while she withdrew from the 2018 French Open due to injury,
in July, she made her highly anticipated
return to Wimbledon.
Only 10 months after she had given birth, in a remarkable
series of matches, Serena had soon made her way to the final.
When Serena came back, I think her being away from the game
made people realize how much they missed her.
To me, it was like foreshadowing what that game
would be like without her.
People were starting to appreciate how much excitement
having her in the draw, how much people wanted to see her play,
that her game was unique.
It wasn't just about power, that she brought something different
to the game.
It was like a buzz around the place when Serena's
in the field.
[Narrator] Yet Serena was unable to claim victory in the final
against old sparring partner, Angelique Kerber.
And at the 2018 US Open, she was also the runner up.
The field had grown since her last Grand Slam wins
and new stars were rising who were presenting
fresh challenges.
Across the next four years, she would reach two more
major finals, but another Grand Slam victory proved elusive.
She may have been the greatest player of the modern era,
but now her remarkable reign had come to a natural end.
[Cecil Harris] By coming back now as a mother
trying to win a major title
and tie a coveted record, Margaret Court's 24
major titles, Serena has 23, and she gamely went
out there to try to achieve that.
Made two US Open finals, two Wimbledon finals.
Unfortunately, she did not win them, but in a strange way,
she became more and more popular as she tried to do that
because it would've been so easy for her
to retire after the 2017 Australian Open.
And rather than say, oh, Serena failed because she lost
those four finals, Serena made those four finals.
[Caitlin Thompson] To be clear, after she had Olympia,
her daughter, she made plenty of Grand Slam finals.
She had great tournaments, she was able to compete.
She wasn't quite able to get over the hump, and I think
part of this is probably the external pressure,
but in the end it doesn't matter so much because
winning even more tennis matches or even more titles
wouldn't have changed the amount of greatness we associated
with her, the amount of change
both within the game, but also societally she has left us with.
And I think the fact that we got to see her really struggle
and ultimately conquer her vulnerability, I think
the fact that we got to see her as a working parent,
just this idea that she brought herself to the moment
and therefore changed the moment, is the greatest
possible impact that she could have had.
[Narrator] And on September 2nd, 2022, at the US Open,
Serena Williams played her final competitive match and bid
an emotional farewell to a sport that she had
dominated for two decades.
Although her career as a fashion entrepreneur
and celebrity would endure,
her departure would bring to an end perhaps
the most astonishing tennis journey of all time,
and leave the game without its most famous face.
Yet her impact on the sport would prove lasting.
The greatest female player of all time began as an outsider,
and through her success, she opened the doors
for new generations to follow her.
Most of the international tennis associations
for different countries have tried to reach into communities
where tennis isn't played.
You go into that community, and you say,
"Hey kids, let's be a tennis player,"
they look around at the sport and they don't see anyone
who looks like them.
So that's the value of diversity, that's the value
of having someone like Serena.
"“I see her now."
"I see myself."
"I am reflected."
So therefore, "Okay, I can do that"”.
It's immeasurable, and that is a legacy.
And these are big overblown things... it's true.
It's not even a conversation.
When she announced her retirement in Toronto,
there were seven black women in the main draw,
and that was not news.
It's just now a constant on the tour.
You see that many in the main draw, more black women
in the main draw of the US Open than
in the Major League Baseball World Series.
[Cecil Harris] Serena did more to change women's tennis
than anyone else,
and the young players who are emerging today
are part of that legacy, because many of them
will tell you they're only playing tennis
because they saw Serena Williams.
Coco Gauff has said, "It was easy for me to pursue
"a tennis career, to tell my parents I want to be
"a tennis player because the number one player
in the world looked like me."
In the case of Naomi Osaka, she was given a class assignment
to write about the person you admired most,
and she wrote about Serena.
And there's Taylor Townsend and Sloan Stevens and Madison Keys,
and Alicia Parks, who won her first
professional title in 2023.
Alicia Parks was actually a body double for Serena
in a Gatorade commercial.
She's that iconic, that a generation later we're seeing
champions who wouldn't be in tennis, who would not have
tennis on their radar, if not for Serena.
♪