'What Venus and Serena Williams have done is probably the greatest sporting achievement across all sports': Vijay Amritraj

Serena Williams, indicated to the world that the tennis icon largely acknowledged to be the greatest female tennis player of all time has decided to bring the curtain down on what has been a phenomenal career. The ongoing US Open was seen as her last dance. But after her first round win on Monday against Danka Kovinic in straight sets Serena decided to let the suspense continue. When asked -'Will this definitely be your final tournament?', the 23 time singles Grand Slam champion replied -'Yeah, I have been pretty vague about it, right? I am going to stay vague because you never know.' You never know indeed.

Serena Williams (AFP Photo)The win in round 1 effectively pushed back the possibly impending retirement by at least a couple of days (Serena plays her second round match on Wednesday against Anett Kontaveit of Estonia), and it also gave Serena's die-hard fans a glimmer of hope that she might just continue to play beyond the year's last Grand Slam as well. The tennis courts have not been too kind to Serena recently and hoping for an all-time record equalling 24th singles Grand Slam title, which she has been chasing for a while now, might sound too ambitious. But regardless of whether that fairytale title win does happen or not what the 40 year old Serena has already achieved in her absolutely stellar career is beyond special - 23 singles Grand Slam titles (just one short of the all-time record held by Margaret Court), 14 doubles Grand Slam titles, 2 Mixed Doubles Grand Slam titles, 4 Olympic gold medals (1 singles and 3 doubles), 5 WTA Tour Finals titles. While those statistics are enough to sum up a player's greatness and then some, the impact Serena has had on tennis globally cannot be measured in numbers. The