Commentary: Serena Williams and the mother of all dilemmas

LONDON: “Believe me, I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family,” writes Serena Williams for the cover scoop of this month’s US Vogue. “If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labour of expanding our family . . . But I’m turning 41 this month, and something’s got to give.”

Williams has decided to “evolve” away from tennis, as she puts it: She will probably play her final match next month. The news has been greeted with a shrug by many - she’s at an age when any professional tennis player might choose to retire - but it’s with a rare candour that Williams has discussed her reasons why.

To start with, she’s not quite ready to retire: Her failure to eclipse Margaret Court’s record of 24 Grand Slam titles will haunt her for years to come. As she says in her first-person essay: “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want that record.”

But following the complications after the birth of her first child, including a C-section, a second pulmonary embolism and post-partum depression, her fitness and mental health have suffered. As she observes ruefully: “I showed up 23 times, and that’s fine.”

It’s better than fine. It’s extraordinary. But Williams’s essay hits a nerve. She retreads the ancient, crusty argument: When is it “expedient” to have a child? Even when you’re at the very summit of a career in which your strength and power seem superhuman, Williams’s words reveal a very human truth. When it comes to having careers and planning families, women cannot have it all.

Some have dismissed her essay as the excuses of a player who can’t quite admit that her time is done. Yes, her body is now geriatric compared with her competition: Until