Tennis star Serena Jameka Williams was born on September 26, 1981 in Saginaw, Michigan and it was her father's dream for one of his daughters to become a tennis superstar, hoping that it would give them an opportunity for a better life. Williams was only four years and a half when she won her first tournament, and by the time she was ten, she had already entered 49 tournaments, winning 46 of them. She then replaced her sister, Venus, as the number one ranked tennis player aged 12 and below in California. In 1991, Williams was sent by her father to attend a tennis school in Florida run by professional player Rick Macci. In September 1995, at the age of fourteen, she became a professional player and had to participate in non-WTA events because she was too young. Her first professional play was in the Bell Challenge in Quebec. Three years later, she finished in the WTA top 20 and in 1999, defeated Amélie Mauresmo in a final the same day that Venus won in Oklahoma City, marking the first time in professional tennis history that two sisters had won titles in the same week. In 1999, Williams won her first Grand Slam tournament when she became US Open champion, becoming the first African American woman to win a Grand Slam singles tournament since Althea Gibson in 1958. The year 2000 brought success to her in the form of the doubles gold medal at the Sydney Olympics. She continued to garner success and by 2007 she was cast for the Fast Cars and Superstars: The Gillette Young Guns Celebrity Race, the new reality series from ABC.
Serena Williams appears on Cars and Superstars: The Gillette Young Guns Celebrity Race, the new stock racing reality series on ABC. She competes with eleven other celebrities such as William Shatner and Jewel.
(Photo courtesy of ABC)