Elsewhere in the op-ed<\/a>, Williams opened up about not liking to use the word \u201cretirement.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cIt doesn\u2019t feel like a modern word to me\u2026 Maybe the best word to describe what I\u2019m up to is evolution,\u201d she wrote at the time. \u201cI\u2019m here to tell you that I\u2019m evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sports great also wrote candidly about how painful the thought of retiring is to her, adding that it was the \u201chardest thing that I could ever imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Williams](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/GettyImages-2245765688.jpg\")
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open image in gallery<\/p>\n
Williams retired from tennis to focus on her growing family (Getty Images)<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate it. I hate that I have to be at this crossroads\u2026 But these days, if I have to choose between building my tennis resume and building my family, I choose the latter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams has won seven Wimbledon titles, seven Australian Opens, six U.S. Opens, and three French Opens. She also holds four Olympic gold medals. Together with her older sister, Venus Williams, they have dominated tennis for the large part of the last 25 years.<\/p>\n
Fans were disappointed to see Williams shoot down a potential return to the tennis circuit, as many commented under her X post that they hope she changes her mind and does eventually come back. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s for you to believe but i know you got another grand slam up in there,\u201d one person on X wrote, while another agreed, writing, \u201cYou got our hopes up there for a minute.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy not? We love you,\u201d a third person wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-297643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Throughout](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/GettyImages-1405668015.jpg\")
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