Serena Williams has always been unafraid to speak her mind. And in her new Glamour cover story, the greatest female tennis player ever sounded off about losing her record-setting Grand Slam hopes in September 2015, as well the unbalanced compensation for female professional athletes compared their male counterparts.
While discussing her loss in the U.S. Open semifinals, Williams was asked about her rumored on-and-off relationship with Drake being blamed for missing another shot at a Grand Slam. Williams decried the notion and said it wasn't "fair" to him because she just didn't have her A-game that day.
No. I don’t think that was fair. I’m the one who’s playing, who’s making mistakes or making winners. I’m not one to blame anyone else for anything. And I don’t think anyone else should either. I played a really good opponent that day. And I wasn’t at my best.
Never one to shy away from political topics, Williams also discussed the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team's complaint about unequal pay compared to the U.S. Men's National Team, as well as the discrepancy between males and females in professional sports in general.
These sports have a lot of work to do. And I really hope that I can be helpful in that journey because I do believe that women deserve the same pay. We work just as hard as men do. I’ve been working, playing tennis, since I was three years old. And to be paid less just because of my sex—it doesn’t seem fair. Will I have to explain to my daughter that her brother is gonna make more money doing the exact same job because he’s a man? If they both played sports since they were three years old, they both worked just as hard, but because he’s a boy, they’re gonna give him more money? Like, how am I gonna explain that to her? In tennis we’ve had great pioneers that paved the way—including Venus, who fought so hard for Wimbledon to pay women the same prize money they pay men, and Billie Jean King, who is one of the main reasons Title IX exists.
For more of what Williams had to say about how she "hates losing more than she likes winning," her brief stint in fashion design school, wanting children someday, and otherwise, you can read the rest of the interview here.
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