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Tennis - HOLLYWOOD-BOLLYWOODIt wouldn’t be easy to follow in your famous sister’s footsteps, but when you’re Serena Williams, you not only follow well, but even take the lead a time or two. Despite being a year younger and entering the pro tennis circuit a year after her sister Venus, it was Serena that won a Grand Slam event first.

Serena was born on September 26, 1981 in Saginaw, Michigan, although she lived with her family in Compton, California until moving to Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Her father, Richard, had wanted to get at least one of his five daughters into competitive tennis as a way to escape the bad neighborhood they lived in, and ended up with both Serena and Venus doing well. Serena played in her first tennis tournament when she was just four. By the time she was ten, she had won 46 of 49 tournaments.

At 14 years old, Serena turned professional, although she couldn’t participate in World Tennis Association (WTA) events because of a new rule that prohibited 14 year olds to participate in events. Two years later, in 1997, Serena had her first wins over top 10 players Monica Seles and Mary Pierce, at the Ameritech Open in Chicago, Illinois.

A year later, Serena and Venus both recorded wins in separate tournaments on the same day, the first time sisters had ever accomplished such a feat. Later in the year, Serena beat three top 10 players while ranked 21, at Indian Wells. She beat Lindsay Davenport, Mary Pierce, and Steffi Graf. Serena was clearly onto something big, as she won her first Grand Slam, winning the U.S. Open in September, a year before Venus reached the accomplishment. The next day, she and Venus won the doubles tournament, and by the end of the year Serena was featured in numerous PUMA ads.

At the 2000 Summer Olympics, Serena won the gold medal with Venus in the doubles event, and one year later won her second Grand Slam event. In 2002 she beat Venus to win three separate championships, at the U.S. Open, French Open, and Wimbledon. Later, Serena won the Wimbledon doubles title with Venus. In 2003, Serena beat Venus once again to win her fourth straight Grand Slam title. She became the sixth woman ever to hold the championship title to all of tennis’ four major tournaments for a year. It was later in 2003 that Serena lost in a very controversial tournament as Justine Henin-Hardenne raised her hand while Serena was serving, indicating to hold the serve. The move upset Serena’s serve, but the chair umpire only allowed a second serve, causing Serena to eventually lose the championship.

After another of Serena’s older sisters, Yetunde Price, was gunned down in a car by a shot meant for her boyfriend sitting next to her, Serena withdrew from the several tournaments to continue healing a nagging knee injury. The injury also caused her to withdraw from the 2004 Summer Olympics. It was because of all this that Serena’s dedication to tennis came into question, as some felt she was dedicating herself too much to her other careers in fashion and acting, as she filmed a made-for-TV movie about her family, Raising Tennis Aces, The William Story and also a reality show with Venus, Venus and Serena: For Real. Along with her ads for PUMA, Serena was now also a spokeswoman for Nike, and sometimes her spectacular tennis outfits, such as a leather catsuit and a denim skirt and boots, received more attention than her wins.

Nevertheless, Serena has continued on in tennis and her outside interests. In 2005 she won her seventh Grand Slam championship, the Australian Open, and beat three of the top four seeds in woman’s tennis, Lindsay Davenport, Amélie Mauresmo, and Maria Sharapova. Later she was nagged with an ankle injury in additional to her continuing knee injury. She has launched her own line of designer clothing, Aneres, with Venus appearing as one of her models, and has been on Ashton Kutcher’s MTV show Punk’d twice.