Serena Williams

There was a moment when tennis fans all over the world thought it was possible: Serena Williams might just win the U.S. Open at 40 and in her last appearance before retirement.

In the weeks leading up to the U.S. Open, it seemed improbable bordering on impossible. In tournaments played in the weeks and months before the late summer major, she had not played well. But there was a sense that somehow Serena had managed the moment to create something truly special.

In early August, she announced her retirement from professional tennis in a remarkable first-person article in Vogue magazine. There, she admitted that after taking time off to have a daughter, combined with the disruptions in sport caused by the global pandemic, had brought her to one of the most difficult decisions of her life.

“I’ve been reluctant to admit that I have to move on from playing tennis,” she wrote. “It’s like a taboo topic. It comes up and I start to cry. I think the only person I’ve really gone there with is my therapist.”

In making that admission, Serena was confirming the greatest and most fundamental truth of elite-level sports: at some point and regardless of the levels of success they may have enjoyed, all athletes will one day face retirement. Planning ahead will help avoid a challenging transition period and in some cases traumatic experiences.

The Career of Elite Athletes

Athletes who are facing the end of their competitive sports career suffer various degrees of psychological trauma. Some studies have found that retiring from elite sports impacts an athletes’ “social and physical worlds, with changes in roles, relationships and daily routines.” Elite female gymnasts, for example, described the sensation of leaving competition as being “stuck between two worlds.”

Current data shows the average career length is just over five years for athletes in the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball, just under five years for the National Basketball Association and only three years in the National Football League. The same holds true for the top levels of competitive soccer. In the English Premier League, for example, the average career is just eight years.

Professional tennis is somewhat of an outlier when it comes to career longevity, particularly when a top-10 player is studied. A detailed study of top-level tennis players showed that average career length for men was 16 years, and for women, 15.8 years. However, the study also showed women tennis players experience a “biphasic career,” where they tend to peak earlier in their careers and experience much less success as they get older.

Serena won her first major – the U.S. Open – in 1999 when she was just 18 years old, and first reached the number one ranking in professional tennis in 2002. However, well into her career, she was still winning major titles, claiming titles at Wimbledon, the Australian Open and French Open, all when she was in her 30s and battling much younger opponents. She won her last major title in 2017 at the Australian Open, becoming the oldest woman ever to win a Grand Slam event.

Unfortunately, Serena’s attempt to win the U.S. Open at 40 came to a crushing halt in the second round, when she lost a closely fought match with Croatian Ajila Tomljanovic, who was more than 10 years her junior.

Listening to Serena at the end of her glorious career confirms that in some ways, all that success makes it even harder to step away.

Managing the inevitable end of a great career 

Serena is proof that being successful – or, in fact, being considered the greatest women tennis player of all time – offers no protection towards retirement.

Serena obviously has advantages other elite athletes don’t have. But Williams has also planned ahead of her retirement, channeling $94 million in tournament winnings and $350 million in career endorsements into a successful business career.

In 2014, Williams founded Serena Ventures, through which she has invested shrewdly in more than 60 startups and giving her a legitimate resumé in business. Along with her sister Venus, Serena is a minority owner of the Miami Dolphins of the NFL and is part of a consortium of successful women – Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria and soccer star Mia Hamm – who own the Angel City FC, a team in the American women’s professional soccer league.

Her business interests are proof that all athletes, even those who do not have access to the financial resources that Serena has amassed, need to plan for life after sport. And that’s what makes Serna’s story so poignant for other athletes: she was not only a role model while competing but is also a symbol for how satisfying life can be after competition.

Williams has frequently said that she is not retiring, but “evolving” into a new stage in her life. And that while she will “miss that version of me, the girl who played tennis,” she is ready for a different life.

“I’m ready to be a mom, explore a different version of Serena,” Williams said at a news conference following her elimination from this year’s US Open. “Technically, in the world, I’m still super young, so I want to have a little bit of a life while I’m still walking.”