As the top tennis player in the world, Serena Williams is not exactly struggling for money and she's planning on keeping it that way. In the July 4 issue of Rolling Stone, Williams chats about the sacrifices she's had to make to climb the charts — and remain there — and why she doesn't want to mismanage her finances like other Black athletes.
"I'm an athlete and I'm Black, and a lot of Black athletes go broke. I do not want to become a statistic, so maybe I overcompensate," she says. "But I'm paranoid. Oprah told me a long time ago, 'You sign every check. Never let anyone sign any checks.'"
Part of staying in top form not only involves proper management, but also sacrificing other things. For 31-year-old Williams, it's having a child even though she feels her biological clock ticking away.
"I've thought it would be cool to have a baby young," Williams says. "You know, be my road dog — like my dogs, they travel the world — but there's always something you have to give up for success. Everything comes at a cost. Just what are you willing to pay for it?"
"I've seriously thought of freezing my eggs — no joke. I've thought about it, but with all the drug testing, if you do that, then you can test positive or something. Maybe I'll check into it again."
In the meantime, she hits the gym hard and the tennis courts even harder to hone her dominance (she's currently enjoying a 31-match winning streak, the longest in her career). But if you think Williams actually enjoys working out, think again. She drags herself through her routines and gets lost in her iPod while she lets her trainer manipulate her body into position. But she's accepted that in order to keep her weight in check, she has to put in the effort — maybe even more so than older sister Venus.
"I had to get comfortable with knowing that one of my weaknesses was my weight," she says after denying herself a cinnamon bun during lunch. "Especially growing up with Venus, who's so tall and slim and model-like, and me, I'm thick and hips and everything. I used to feel like I wanted to be her. I wanted to be thin, but it wasn't me, so I had to learn that I'm going to have larger boobs. I'm going to be bigger, and just enjoy that. So I think it's good for a lot of other girls who are curvy or more bodacious to be confident in themselves."
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 (Photo: PAP Photo/FFT/Corinne Dubreuil, Pool)