Serena Williams started playing tennis as a little kid alongside her older sister Venus on cracked public courts in Compton, California. Their father Richard had taught himself the game from books and videos, then taught his daughters. By the time Serena was a teenager, both sisters were rising stars.
She won her first Grand Slam title at the 1999 US Open at age 17. Over the next two decades she won 22 more - at the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open - plus 4 Olympic gold medals. She is the only tennis player to win all four Grand Slams twice on three different court surfaces.
Most amazing of all: she won the 2017 Australian Open singles title without losing a single set, and only found out a couple of weeks later that she was about two months pregnant at the time. After her daughter Olympia was born, she came back to play more years on tour before retiring in 2022.
