Life's Work
Ranked number one in the world among female tennis professionals in 2002, Serena Williams had become one of the sport's most exciting and closely watched young players.

With her older sister Venus, she formed half of a tennis-prodigy pair that had been making headlines from an early age. As an African American in an historically white- and European-dominated sport, she found herself in the spotlight and under scrutiny.

Serena and Venus Williams were coached by their father, Richard, an unorthodox career-builder whose methods stirred comment and controversy. Beyond all these reasons Serena Williams caught the attention of tennis fans simply because she was a player of extraordinary ability and dynamism. She rose to the very top of her game achieving the No. 1 ranking among female tennis players in the world in 2002 and winning seven Grand Slam events by 2005.

Serena Williams was born in Saginaw, Michigan, on September 26, 1981, but she and her sister were raised in the economically depressed and often violence-riddled Los Angeles suburb of Compton. Her father, Richard Williams, ran a private security firm, and her mother Oracene (who often uses the name Brandy) was a nurse. A fan of televised tennis, Richard Williams dreamed of the opportunities that might await his offspring-to-be: "I went to my wife and said, 'Let's have kids and make them tennis players,'" he told Newsweek. Venus, born in 1980, and Serena, the youngest daughter, showed promise from the start. "Venus and Serena took to tennis as soon as rackets were put in their hands," older sister Lyndrea told Sport magazine.

Early career
The sisters' early training took place on public tennis courts in and around Compton, where they remember having to duck gunfire. Despite this difficult beginning, though, their skills developed rapidly. Serena entered her first tournament at the age of four and a half, and over the next five years, her father has claimed, she won 46 of 49 tournaments she entered. She succeeded Venus as the number-one player in southern California's highly competitive age-12-and-under rankings, and well before reaching adolescence both sisters had attracted national attention in the form of invitations to prestigious tennis camps, promises of lucrative product-endorsement deals, and glowing newspaper reportage.

WTA Ranks
Williams's first professional match in the WTA was in Moscow in 1997 where she was taken out in the first round by a highly ranked player. Many critics claimed that she did not have the talent of her older sister, who was slowly climbing the ranks of the WTA, but that perception was soon to change.

Williams qualified for an Ameritech-sponsored tournament in Chicago where she was slated to face Mary Pierce, who was ranked number seven in the world, in the second round. She staged a stunning upset over Pierce, beating her in only two sets. This advanced her to the quarter finals where she faced an even more difficult opponent, fourth-ranked Monica Seles.

At first it seemed that Williams had given her all in the match against Pierce as she dropped the first set to Seles. Then, in a shocking turn of events, Williams rallied and won the next two sets, defeating Seles. The critics who had said that she showed little promise only a few weeks before now spoke of her as the next rising WTA star, which was reflected in her ranking, which jumped from 304 to 102 after the tournament. She would finish 1997, her first full season with the WTA, with a ranking of 99.

By the following year her world ranking had risen as high as number 21, and both Williams and her sister, Venus, were bona-fide celebrities. She served notice that her time had come when she advanced to the semifinals of a Sydney, Australia tournament by beating the then third-ranked woman in the world, Lindsay Davenport, who went on to become the United States Open champion that year.

Expected to do well in her first Grand tournament, the Australian Open, Williams had the bad luck of having to face her sister in the second round after ousting ninth-ranked Irina Spirlea in the first round.

Venus emerged victorious, and Essence magazine reported that she was heard to say, "I'm sorry I had to take you out, Serena," as the two sisters walked off the court. This was the first time that the public caught a glimpse of the relationship between the two sisters and how they work not only to be the best for themselves, but also to motivate each other. The sisters met again that year at the Italian Open, this time in the quarter finals where once again Venus took the victory.

Nineteen-ninety-eight continued to be an excellent year for Williams as she realized success beyond expectations. She began to play in doubles play and won two other doubles titles that year with Venus in Oklahoma City and Zurich. Her victory in Oklahoma City became Williams's first pro title in doubles, but it would not be her last. She also went on to win two mixed double titles at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open with partner Max Mirnyi.

1999 was a watershed year for Williams as it would be the one in which she won her first singles title as well as a Grand Slam tournament. Ranked No. 21 at the beginning of the season, her first singles title came at the Paris Indoor tournament where she defeated Amelie Mauresmo in three sets.

From there Williams went on to win Indian Wells where she plowed through Lindsey Davenport, Mary Pierce, and number seven ranked Steffi Graf to gain the victory. Williams was on a 16-match win streak when she went against Venus again in the finals of a tournament in Miami, having defeated Seles, Coetzer, and number one ranked Martina Hingis in straight sets. Despite losing to her sister again, Williams cracked the top ten of the rankings for the first time, becoming the ninth best player in the world.

Williams's biggest match of the year, however, came when she entered the U.S. Open. Her road to the finals took her through fourth-ranked Seles and second-ranked Davenport. Once she had defeated them, she had to face number one ranked Hingis, and when the final match was over, Williams had won her first Grand Slam tournament in record-setting fashion.

She became the lowest seeded player to ever win the title and only the second African-American woman to win a Grand Slam title. The only thing Williams had not done yet was to beat her sister Venus, and that happened later that year when the sisters met in the finals of the Grand Slam Cup. It seemed that nothing could stop Williams and that she was poised to take over the world of women's tennis.

Became Best
The 2001 season started out slow for Williams when she lost twice to Hingis, once in Sydney and once at the Australian Open. She did, however, find victory again in the doubles tournament of the Australian Open with her sister Venus. As doubles partners, the Williams sisters seemed undefeatable.  While Venus would continue to succeed early in the season, Williams seemed to continue down the familiar path she had traveled in 1999 and 2000 when she withdrew from the Paris Indoor tournament with fatigue and from the Scottsdale tournament with the flu. While she did win a title at Indian Wells over Kim Clijster, she fell to Capriati in the quarter-finals round in the Miami tournament and withdrew from the Charleston tournament, the Italian Open, and the Madrid tournament because of knee injuries.

Williams bounced back to win the Canadian Open over third-ranked Capriati who had knocked her out of Wimbledon that year in the second quarter-finals round. Then Williams dominated the U.S. Open defeating Davenport and Hingis on her way to the finals where she once again was matched up against her sister Venus. It was the first time that the sisters had ever met in a Grand Slam final and while the match-up proved to be much more exciting than their semifinal round in Wimbledon the previous year, Williams still walked away defeated by her older sister.

While Williams took the loss hard, she used it as a stepping stone to improve even more and by the end of the season, she was in peak form and for the first time was healthy enough to compete in the WTA Championship. She advanced to the finals where she faced Davenport, but the match was never played because Davenport withdrew with a knee injury. While Williams has said she would have rather played the match to prove that she was the best player that year, she still walked away with a major win, her first since her U.S. Open win in 1999.

Finally, in 2002, Williams hit her stride and began to rack up the victories. She started off slow with an ankle injury in the Australian Open, but went on to win a major tournament in Miami, where she beat the three top players in the world (Hingis, sister Venus, and Capriati) on the way to the title. From there, Williams only continued to succeed.

She took the Italian Open victory from Capriati and then captured the French Open title, beating out Venus for the first time in a Grand Slam competition and rising to No. 2 in the world rankings, bested only by her No. 1 ranked sister, Venus. The siblings got a chance at a rematch later that year when they met in the final at Wimbledon, where once again, Williams defeated Venus to take the title.

To Williams, this was the most important win of her career to date, because, as she told the Sunday Mercury, As in past years, Williams also competed with sister Venus in the doubles competition at Wimbledon and came away with another title, their fifth Grand Slam victory as a team.

After Wimbledon, Williams quickly snatched the number one ranking away from Venus and for the next year held on to it with amazing play on the courts. She once again defeated Venus, this time in the U.S. Open, for a third straight Grand Slam victory that year.

She also won numerous other tournaments both in single and double play including the Princess Cup in Tokyo and the Leipzig tournament, but ended up losing the WTA Championship to Clijster in two sets. The following season she started off strong by winning her fourth straight Grand Slam event, once again beating Venus in the finals at the Australian Open, and becoming one of only five women to have ever held all four Grand Slam titles at one time.

The Williams sisters took the doubles title as well at the Australian Open, their sixth straight. Williams went on to win the Paris Indoor tournament and Miami tournament before losing in the Charleston tournament finals to Justine Henin-Hardenne, ending a 21-match winning streak.

Awards
Selected: Won seven Grand Slam tournaments including 1999 and 2002 U.S. Open, 2002 French Open, 2002 and 2003 Wimbledon, the 2003 and 2005 Australian Open; won six Grand Slam doubles tournaments including 1999 U.S. Open, 1999 French Open, 2000 and 2002 Wimbledon, and the 2001 and 2003 Australian Open; won WTA Championship, 2001; won Olympic gold medal for doubles tennis, 2000; WTA number one ranked player in the world, July 8, 2002-August 10, 2003; Female Athlete of the Year, Associated Press, 2003; ESPY for female tennis player of the year and female athlete of the year, 2003; Sportswoman of the Year, Laureus World Sports Academy.