You may have noticed that one of the world’s greatest ever female tennis players, Serena Williams, recently came out of retirement to play tennis again. First doubles, but who knows, singles may be on the cards.
Why? In Serena’s own words:
“I don’t know. I had nothing better to do. I got tired of sitting at home. My kids are out of school for the summer, so why not?”
Her first match back was a straight sets win after being away for four years. Second match back wasn’t as successful. Her doubles partner was forced to withdraw from the match after injuring her knee playing singles.
Tennis observers will know Serena’s older sister, Venus, despite some long breaks due to injury has never retired and is still going at 45. The sisters both turned professional at 14 and went full time a few years later, so in terms of sport, these have been long, long careers. Retirements are something we have an ongoing interest in. Part of our reason for being in business is helping people retire. This one caught our attention for several reasons, along with Venus still playing.
Quite often when you see sportspeople making comebacks there’s an element of desperation in it, financially at least. Boxers coming out of retirement for paydays isn’t uncommon. It also may be the old problem that they’ve got nothing else going on and haven’t been able to adjust.
In the case of the Williams sisters, it’s a little more mystifying. Both are in the top five for Women’s tennis prize money, they would have enjoyed three decades of sponsorship dollars, both are minority owners of an American Football team which has grown 4x since they bought in. To top it off for Serena, she married a guy worth nine figures!
The pair were also quite vocal earlier in their careers that tennis would likely be short, or that was the expectation for a tennis career. They also didn’t want to be hanging around tennis as commentators or pundits, and they were planning to have other interests to keep them occupied, as Serena said to Oprah in 2003.
“We get bored quickly. A lot of players have a myopic view, but we know tennis can last only so long. After their careers, a lot of stars say, “What should I do now?” Then they realize there’s no money left. We’ve always had something to fall back on.”
While Venus said she was looking forward to something away from tennis.
“We’ve been training and playing full-time since we were 18 and 19. So after tennis, we’ll be excited to see what it’s like to have more free time.”
Venus has been involved with interior design, running a design company, fashion and publishing books, also getting a degree in business. Serena was also active outside tennis, with interests in fashion, publishing, sports ventures, appearing in multiple TV shows and movies, and starting a venture capital firm.
Yet here they are. Both into their 40’s, still swinging a tennis racket. It all poses the question: if these two can’t enjoy retirement, or find something else to do, what chance does anyone else have?
However, most of us aren’t retiring from professional sport. And most of us aren’t professional sportspeople. The grind of the professional tennis tour is clearly brutal, but it also has some addictive qualities. Venus spelled it out when she returned from an injury layoff in 2025 and was asked what she missed.
“All the times that I had and, of course, the adrenaline, all those things. Just the pure fun of playing the game, the fun of the challenge, overcoming — when you play, you overcome so many challenges: your opponents, the conditions, a lot of times you have to overcome yourself. Those things are very exciting.”
For the rest of us, while our jobs might be slightly more mundane, they do provide structure and purpose, but if you look past the motivations, there’s also the ability. As living standards improve, we’re not quite as old as we used to be.
Modern athletes benefit enormously from advances that previous generations lacked. Better nutrition, sports science, recovery techniques, data-driven training, and medical support mean some athletes may feel physically better in their late 30’s and early 40’s than athletes did several decades ago. Their body holds up longer.
Still, feeling better doesn’t necessarily translate to performing like a 25-year-old at 40. The “Enhanced Games”, which allowed performance enhancing substances recently showed this. Once someone is past their physical prime, even with chemical assistance, they’re unlikely to recapture their peak. The same has been true for Venus, she used to be a world number one, but her performances as she ages certainly aren’t world beating, but it doesn’t mean she can’t continue.
That might be the lesson here. We can all put plans in place around when we want to retire and what we want to do, but things may change. When we get there, we may have multiple options and feel differently about our intentions from twenty years ago. It doesn’t mean we can’t continue.
What should be the plan? Plan for longevity in everything. This goes for career and retirement. We may want to extend our career instead of cutting it short, we also may be surprised how long we live, along with how well we can live.
In short, do what you enjoy for as long as you can, especially if you claim you’ve got nothing better to do, like Serena Williams!
This represents general information only. Before making any financial or investment decisions, we recommend you consult a financial planner to take into account your personal investment objectives, financial situation and individual needs.
