Serena Williams has done it all in tennis, but there’s so much more to come.
A member of one of the most successful tennis families in history and the first woman to have won an Olympic gold medal, Williams, 34, has not only won the four Grand Slam titles and become the only player to win five at a single tournament, she has set the high bar for players to reach within a few decades.
But she’s just getting started.
From 2016 to 2020, the three-time major champion will attempt, and accomplish, an additional feat: beating Roger Federer for the men’s singles championship at Wimbledon, the oldest event in the championship calendar. That would be in her sixth Grand Slam tournament, or the first of the year. Only four players have accomplished that feat during their careers, and they include the likes of Margaret Court in 1984, Bjorn Borg in 1996, and Sharapova in 2009.
If Serena were to knock off Roger Federer on Monday (8 p.m. ET on the Tennis Channel), it would be the closest a man has gotten to capturing the men’s singles championship of the championship for the first time in nearly six decades. In fact, Federer and Serena have faced off 13 times at Grand Slam tournaments over the course of their careers.
“A lot of people thought I was going to have the easiest time of my life this year,” Serena said. “But I had fun with it.”
Her season will kick into high gear Tuesday with a six-hour practice session on the court, and then she’ll fly to Miami for the tournament, where she’ll play her next set against the No. 1-ranked player in the world. There is no date that can be placed on the Wimbledon Championship, and whether or not Serena beats Federer is still unknown when the tournament begins in earnest at 5:40 p.m. ET on Monday. But no matter how close the match is, Serena will have no regrets about how the whole thing unfolded.
“For me, I’m still an amateur for a while longer,” she said. “I won