Taking a timeout. Serena Williams will be starting her maternity leave from tennis after announcing her pregnancy on Wednesday, April 19.
The athlete’s rep Kelly Bush Novak confirmed to Reuters that Williams will not be competing for the remainder of the 2017 season, which includes the French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. She will return to the sport next year, Novak said.
The 23-time Grand Slam champ, 35, first revealed via Snapchat that she’s expecting her first child with fiancé Alexis Ohanian. Williams snapped a mirror pic and showed off her bump in a yellow one-piece bathing suit. “20 weeks,” she captioned it. Her post also confirmed that she won the Australian Open singles title in January when she was approximately two-months pregnant.
Us Weekly exclusively reported that the Olympian and the Reddit cofounder, 33, were dating in October 2015. They announced their engagement on Reddit, naturally, in December 2016.
The tennis superstar also hinted last week that she’s been reading up on motherhood. She posted an Instagram photo on April 13 of her close friend Kelly Rowland’s new book, Whoa Baby!, but kept her own pregnancy on the down-low. “Ok so this book Kelly wrote is a guide for new moms. One of these days I hope to apply this (but for now I’ll stick to my dog Chip). The introduction is hilarious and had me hooked from the first word! Congrats my friend,” she wrote.
