Back in September, Serena Williams was set to make history, just one match away from winning all four tennis Grand Slams in a single calendar year. Even though Roberta Vinci ended up walking away from the Victor at the US Open, Williams’s 2015 was nothing short of legendary: now, she was named Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year, the first female tennis player to receive the award since Billie Jean King earned the distinction in 1972. (King shared it with John Wooden.) While you may be familiar with her court stats, countless honors, and highest serve speed, here are five things you may not know about Serena Williams.
1. Williams began playing tennis at the age of 3. Though she was born in Michigan, her father, Richard Williams, relocated the family to Compton, California. According to her father’s autobiography, he reasoned that the difficult environment in Compton would “make them tough, give them a fighter’s mentality.”
2. Williams became a Jehovah’s Witness after her mother converted in the early 1980s. She keeps her faith private for the most part, but after winning her sixth Australian Open in January, Williams opened up to the crowd. “I have to thank Jehovah God for this,” she said. “I was down and out and He helped me today and I just said prayers, not to win but to be strong and to be healthy, and in the end, I was able to come through, so I have to give the glory to Him first and foremost.”
3. Serena and her sister, Venus, became minority owners of the Miami Dolphins in 2009, making them the first female African-Americans to hold a stake in an NFL franchise. The sisters reside in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, where they also did a majority of their training. “We’re just ‘Go Fins!’–type people,” Williams has said.
4. Williams is something of a Francophile. After winning the French Open in 2013, she conducted several interviews in French, and she owns an apartment in Paris. She also was once romantically linked to her French coach, Patrick Mouratoglou (pre-Drake days, of course), and told reporters at the time that speaking French is “way, way more nerve-racking than playing tennis.”
5. Her interest in fashion isn’t limited to her on-court sartorial flair. Williams reportedly hoped to design wedding dresses. “That was my first real love,” she recently told New York magazine, “but then I was like, ‘Listen. I’m playing professional tennis. I’ll just do athleticwear.’ ” Her line, Serena Williams Signature Statement Collection, is available on the Home Shopping Network, and Williams even showed her collection at this year’s New York Fashion Week.
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