Serena Williams announced that she would “evolve” away from tennis after the US Open. But after losing in the third round of the tournament, the 40-year-old may not be ready to start her retirement. While appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Williams was asked if there was a chance of her pulling a Tom Brady and unretire.
“You know what? Tom Brady started an amazing trend. That’s what I want to say,” Williams said, per PEOPLE. Williams won 23 Grand Slam singles titles in her career, which is the most in the Open Era. She has been competing at a high level for 27 years, and while she has nothing more to prove, her future in the sport is not as clear as it seems.
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“I think retirement is something that’s super-earned, that people work really hard for,” she said Tuesday night. “But I just feel like I’m at an age where I definitely have a lot more to give, there’s a lot more I want to do, and so, I’m not going to be relaxing, there is so much more for me and I feel it’s more like an evolution of Serena. And there’s so many things that I’ve been wanting to do for so many years and I have such a passion for tennis for so long that I have never done it but now it’s time for me to, like, try to enjoy those things.”
Williams also revealed that only one person knew about her plans before her retirement announcement in an essay for Vogue. “The only person that knew at one point about it was my therapist,” she said to Fallon. “Because verbalizing meant that it was real, and I don’t want it to be real so I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do and I don’t think you really know until, I don’t know, until you say it or it’s actually real.”
Along with winning 23 Grand Slam singles titles, Williams won 14 Grand Slam doubles championships with her older sister Venus, who has not announced her retirement. Williams also won three Olympic Gold medals with Venus in doubles competition and won another gold medal in singles competition at the 2012 Olympics in London.
