United States tennis champion, Serena Williams, has announced her retirement from the sport. <\/p>\n
She made the announcement on Tuesday on her social media pages, stating that \u2018the countdown has begun\u2019 to quit the sport.<\/p>\n
Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam winner, added that a time has come in her life for her to move in a different direction.<\/p>\n
The 40-year-old said in a post on Instagram that it is time to focus on her family and achieve her spiritual growth.<\/p>\n
She wrote, \u201cThere comes a time in life when we have to decide to move in a different direction. That time is always hard when you love something so much. My goodness do I enjoy tennis. But now, the countdown has begun.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to focus on being a mom, my spiritual goals, and finally discovering a different, but just exciting Serena. I\u2019m gonna relish these next few weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an exclusive piece in Vogue magazine, Williams noted that she had never liked the word \u2018retirement\u2019 but would rather go with the word \u2018evolution\u2019.<\/p>\n
She said, \u201cI have never liked the word retirement. It doesn\u2019t feel like a modern word to me. I\u2019ve been thinking of this as a transition, but I want to be sensitive about how I use that word, which means something very specific and important to a community of people.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe the best word to describe what I\u2019m up to is evolution. I\u2019m here to tell you that I\u2019m evolving away from tennis toward other things that are important to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cA few years ago I quietly started Serena Ventures, a venture capital firm. Soon after that, I started a family. I want to grow that family.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
United States tennis champion, Serena Williams, has announced her retirement from the sport. She made the announcement on Tuesday on her social media pages, stating that \u2018the countdown has begun\u2019 to quit the sport. Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam winner, added that a time has come in her life for her to move in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":52716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_bookmark_settings":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[43773,2470,7978,24647],"class_list":["post-209122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-grand-slam","tag-retirement","tag-serena-williams","tag-tennis"],"yoast_head":"\n