Serena Williams and Arthur Ashe Stadium go back. Way back.

The 23-time Grand Slam champion is expected to retire from tennis following the 2022 US Open — a fitting cap to her career, as the New York tournament provided the setting for her first major title back in 1999.

But don’t count her out in her swan song.

Williams has won her first two matches, including an upset victory Wednesday against No. 2 seed Anett Kontaveit in the second round. She advances to face Ajla Tomljanović on Friday in the round of 32.

As Williams eyes another electric run at Arthur Ashe Stadium, Just Women’s Sports takes a look back at her six previous US Open championships.

1999: A star is born

A teenager entered the 1999 final as the world No. 1 and a five-time major champion – and it wasn’t Williams. Martina Hingis entered as the seasoned veteran at all of 18 years old, while 17-year-old Williams came in as the upstart looking for her first major victory.

The No. 7 seed, Williams faced off against four eventual Hall of Famers on the way to the final: Kim Clijsters, Conchita Martinez, Monica Seles and finally No. 2 seed Lindsay Davenport in the semifinals.

In the championship match, Williams won in straight sets, 6-3, 7-6 (9-7), announcing herself as a star in her own right. She even beat older sister Venus to a major title – Venus won her first two in 2000 at Wimbledon and back at the US Open.

“Even though Richard Williams had already been making noise about how Serena ultimately was going to be the better player, better than Venus, we didn’t think it was going to happen quite yet,” Hall of Fame tennis journalist Steve Fink told USOpen.org. “I just remember it really surprised me. A year or two later it wouldn’t have, but I thought Martina was still going to have the edge at that stage in the final, with her experience.”

2002: The Venus and Serena Show

After winning her first US Open, Williams did not win another major until 2002 – but that year, she went on a tear. She won the French Open and Wimbledon before capping her year with another win in New York, and all three titles came against sister Venus.

She blazed through the year’s last major. In her first five matches, she conceded just 14 games through 10 sets, then dispatched No. 4 seed Davenport in straight sets in the semifinal. Finally, the younger Williams sister then took down the elder 6-4, 6-3.

“Serena was the best player the whole tournament this year,” Venus said at the time. “I have to give it to her for that. My game went down after the fourth round and I just couldn’t do a thing to bring it back up.”

This major saw Serena turn heads not just for her play but also for her fashion sense. The now infamous catsuit, designed by Puma, drew worldwide attention following her first match.

“If you don’t have a decent shape, this isn’t the outfit to have,” Williams said. “It makes me run faster and jump higher and it’s really sexy. [Venus told me it’s] really fun, really exciting and very sexy. I mean, she just basically described me.”

While Williams received blowback for the outfit, she shut down the critics, saying, “Nobody is ever going to tell me what to wear.”

2008: Reclaimed glory

Williams reached No. 1 in the world for the first time in 2002, but she lost the ranking in 2003. She didn’t regain the top spot again until her third US Open win in 2008.

Entering as the No. 4 seed, Williams did not drop a set en route to the title. Her most troublesome match of the tournament came in the quarterfinals against Venus, who took Serena to tiebreakers in both sets.

From there, Williams sailed through the semifinal against Dinara Safina and the final against Jelena Jankovic.

While she walked away with her ninth major, Williams asserted after the match that she wasn’t satisfied. Of course, she eventually compiled a total of 23 Grand Slam singles titles.

“I’m pushing the doors to double digits, which I obviously want to get to,” she said. “I feel like I can do it.”

2012: 30 and thriving

With her win over Victoria Azarenka in 2012, Williams became the third woman in history to win Wimbledon, the US Open and the Olympics in the same season, joining Steffi Graf (1988) and sister Venus (2000).

The world No. 1 made a near-flawless run, with her only lost set coming in the final against Azarenka, which she won 6-2, 2-6, 7-5. Williams served up 13 total aces in the final and hit a peak serve of 125 mph at one point in the match.

Despite her dominant play, Williams found herself on the verge of defeat – two points away from it, in fact – before she rallied to take the final four games and win the final set.

After winning her 15th major at the age of 30, Williams would rattle off another eight majors in her 30s.

2013: Back-to-back titles

The duo of Azarenka and Williams met once again in the US Open final, and once again, it was a three-set thriller, with Williams winning 7-5, 6-7 (10-8), 6-1. In another repeat of the previous year, Williams’ lone dropped set came against Azarenka in the final.

The 2013 major marked the 17th of her career, officially beginning the chants proclaiming Williams to be the greatest of all time. It also marked her fourth major in 16 months, a record for a women’s player over the age of 30.

Five majors away from Steffi Graf’s record of 22 in the Open era, 32-year-old Williams shut down questions about age as an obstacle to her success.

“I don’t think about it. I always said, age for me, I feel great. I’ve never felt better,” she said. “I feel really fit. I haven’t felt like this in a number of years, and so I’m excited about the possibilities.

“I don’t know what can happen, I just keep playing and doing the best that I can.”

Of course, Williams would go on to win six more majors. Further defying the doubters, Williams would make the final at both Wimbledon and the US Open in 2018 mere months after giving birth to daughter Olympia Ohanian.

2014: Three-peat for the ages

Williams won her third consecutive US Open in 2014, just one off the record of Chris Evert, who rattled off four in a row from 1975-78. For a record-matching third time, she did not lose a set en route to the title.

She also equaled the record for US Open singles titles in the Open era.

In the final, Williams took down friend Caroline Wozniacki, 6-3, 6-1. The match lasted just 75 minutes, and Williams was emotional as she accepted the trophy on the same court on which she won her first at 17 years old.

“It is a pleasure for me to win my first Grand Slam here and then this No. 18,” Williams said. “So I’m really emotional. I couldn’t ask to do it at a better place.”

For her win, Williams won a record $4 million – $3 million in prize money plus $1 million as a bonus for having the best record during the North America summer hard court circuit. The match also made her the first women’s athlete to earn more than $60 million in prize money.

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, at a White House ceremony this afternoon. 

The Team USA standout is the most decorated women’s swimmer in the sport’s history. In addition to her seven Olympic golds, she’s also won a total of 21 gold medals at the World Championships, the most of any swimmer regardless of gender. 

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The esteemed award recognizes those who have "made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors," according to a White House press briefing. 

Ledecky is one of 19 medal recipients chosen by the Biden administration this year. She joins a class that spans the worlds of politics, sports, film, human rights, religion, and science. Her fellow 2024 awardees include Everything Everywhere All at Once actress Michelle Yeoh, pioneering Hispanic astronaut Dr. Ellen Ochoa, and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, plus posthumous winners Jim Thorpe, the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the US, and assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers. 

Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and USWNT legend Megan Rapinoe were among 2022’s class of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients. Biles and Rapinoe were the fifth and sixth women athletes to be given the honor, making Ledecky the seventh.

After an illustrious career for both club and country, Gotham FC and U.S. Women’s National Team defender Kelley O’Hara announced today via Kelley on the Street that she will be retiring from professional soccer at the end of this year, making the 2024 NWSL season her last.

"I have always said I would play under two conditions: that I still love playing soccer, and if my body would let me do it the way I wanted to," O’Hara told Just Women’s Sports in the lead-up to her retirement announcement. "I realized a while back that I was always going to love it, so it was the physical piece that was going to be the deciding factor."

The 35-year-old will retire as a two-time World Cup champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and at least a two-time NWSL champion, depending on where Gotham finishes this season. Her legacy as a player is hard to fully encapsulate, and will forever run through some of the biggest snapshots in USWNT and NWSL history. 

In 2012, O’Hara played every minute of the USWNT’s Olympic gold medal run, after having recently converted into a defender. Her soaring goal off the bench in the 2015 World Cup semifinal is the stuff of legend. And her return from lingering injury to play in every knockout match of the national team’s 2019 World Cup win cemented a storybook international career. 

It was O’Hara who scored the overtime goal in 2021 to earn the Washington Spirit their first-ever NWSL championship, and O’Hara who returned to help see Gotham earn a title in 2023 after years spent in the trenches with the club’s previous iteration, Sky Blue. Her 15-year career spanned two professional women’s soccer leagues in the U.S. (she earned her first professional title in 2010 with WPS’s FC Gold Pride), as well as sweeping changes to the sport both on and off the pitch.

On the field, O’Hara has always been known for a motor that never quits, making the right flank her domain in attacking possession and defensive transition. In recent years, she’s also been celebrated for a competitive fire that raises the level of her teammates, whether she’s in the starting XI or supporting from the bench.

But injuries take a toll, a reality not always seen by the fans watching from home. "I've never taken anything for granted, and I feel like I've never coasted either," O’Hara said of her late-career success in the NWSL despite battling injuries. "I've always been like, 'I gotta put my best foot forward every single day I step on this field' — which is honestly probably half the reason why I'm having to retire now as opposed to getting a couple more years out of it. I've just grinded hard."

Recently, O’Hara has been sidelined at Gotham with ankle and knee injuries, and the situation motivated her to really prioritize listening to her body. "To get injured and come back, and get injured and come back, and just keep doing it, it really takes a toll on you.

"People don't see the doubt that's associated with injury,” she continued. "As athletes we feel a certain way, we perform a certain way, our body feels a certain way, we're very in tune with our bodies. And there's always so much doubt surrounding injury. It’s like, 'Can I feel the way I felt before?' The reality is sometimes you don't."

O’Hara didn’t arrive at the decision to move on from her playing career lightly. But once she began seriously considering making 2024 her final year during the last NWSL offseason, it felt right. "Once I was like, 'Alright, you know what, this will be my last year,' I have had a lot of peace with it," she said. "Truly the only thing I felt was gratitude for everything that my career has been, all the things I've been able to do and the people I've been able to do it with."

She said she’ll miss daily interactions with her teammates and all the amazing memories they’ve created, though she feels lucky to have formed relationships that go beyond sharing a locker room. "You're basically getting to hang out and just shoot the shit with your best friends every day," she reflected. "Which is so unheard of, and I just feel very lucky to do it for so long."

The Stanford graduate also mentioned that the NWSL’s suspension of regular season play in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic made her realize how much playing allowed her the space to simply be creative every day. The tactical elements of soccer provided O’Hara an outlet for problem solving and made use of her naturally competitive edge.

She’s now gearing up to channel her on-field intensity into her post-playing career full time, which is a new chapter she’s excited to begin. "I don't know if the world's ready for it, like the fact that I'm not going to be putting all of my energy into football all the time," she said with a laugh. 

O’Hara said she would like to stay connected to the game in some fashion, whether it be as an owner, coach, or member of a front office. She’s also interested in the growing media space surrounding women’s sports, having provided on-camera analysis for broadcasters like CBS Sports in addition to starting a production company with her fiancée.

"I just feel like I have a lot of passions, and things that excite me," she says. "And I do want to stay as close as I can to the game, because I feel a responsibility — and I'm not sure in what capacity — to continue to grow it."

A sense of responsibility to grow the game has been a consistent refrain for the USWNT and NWSL players of O’Hara’s era, who ushered in a new age of equal pay for the national team and collectively bargained protections for those in the league. The landscape for new players looks different than it did 14 years ago, in large part due to this pivotal generation.

"I feel an immense sense of pride around that, because I don't know if any of us knew that was gonna happen," she said. "We kind of, as things unfolded, took the next step towards changing what women's football looks like in this country and around the world.

"I'm really grateful to have been part of this era with the players that I was [with], not backing down and pushing and knowing that was the right thing to do."

Whatever the future holds, O’Hara is going ahead full throttle. It’s a piece of advice she’d also give to the next generation of professionals looking to make their own impact.

"Whatever you do in life, do it because you love it, and the chips will fall in place," she said. "If you love something, you're willing to do what it takes. You're willing to make the sacrifices, you're willing to handle the roller coaster.

"To me, it's simple. Don't do it for any other reason but that, and I think you'll be alright."

The Phoenix Mercury center spoke with Robin Roberts about her 10-month incarceration, reflecting on her poor living conditions and shaky mental state ahead of her May 7th memoir.

"The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper," Griner told the ABC News anchor in last night’s 20/20 special. "That was the moment where I just felt less than a human." 

She also detailed some of her lowest moments during that time, saying with tears in her eyes that she went so far as to consider taking her own life on more than one occasion. However, the thought of Russian officials not releasing her body back to her family made her reconsider.

"I just didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through," said Griner.

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In February 2022, Griner was arrested and charged with drug possession and smuggling by a Russian court after Sheremetyevo International Airport police found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The cartridges were prescribed by Griner’s doctor for chronic pain back in Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal. In the interview, the two-time Olympic gold medalist said she had a "mental lapse" while packing, and never intended to bring the cannabis products with her when she returned to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg.

"It's just so easy to have a mental lapse," Griner said. "Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn't take away from how that can happen." 

She was later sentenced to nine years behind bars after her Russian attorneys advised her to plead guilty the following July. Griner was then sent to a remote penal colony where she was forced to spend her days cutting cloth to make military uniforms. From there, it only got worse.

"Honestly, it just had to happen," she said when asked about her decision to cut off her signature long locks. "We had spiders above my bed making nests.

"My dreads started to freeze," she added. "They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to survive."

Shortly after Griner’s initial arrest, the U.S. State Department classified her case as wrongfully detained, escalating its urgency within the government and calling even more attention to the situation. On December 8th, she was freed in a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration.

While she told Roberts she was "thrilled" when she got the news, she was also very upset about having to leave fellow wrongful detainee Paul Whelan behind. She also continues to carry guilt about her arrest, saying "At the end of the day, it's my fault. And I let everybody down."

Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, hits shelves on May 7th.

"Coming Home begins in a land where my roots developed and is the diary of my heartaches and regrets," Griner told ABC News in an exclusive statement. "But, ultimately, the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions who rallied for my rescue helped me endure a nightmare."

Longtime USWNT fixture Carli Lloyd took to Instagram Wednesday morning to announce that she’s pregnant with her first child. 

"Baby Hollins coming in October 2024!" she wrote. The caption framed a collaged image of baby clothes, an ultrasound photo, and syringes indicating what she described as a "rollercoaster" fertility journey.

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In a Women’s Health story published in tandem with Lloyd’s post, the Fox Sports analyst and correspondent opened up about her struggles with infertility and the lengthy IVF treatments she kept hidden from the public eye.

"Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results," Lloyd told Women’s Health’s Amanda Lucci. "But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began."

Lloyd went on to discuss her road to pregnancy in great detail, sharing the highs and lows of the process and expressing gratitude for the care and support her family and medical team provided along the way. She rounded out the piece with a nod toward others navigating the same challenges, encouraging people to share their own pregnancy journeys, painful as they may be.

"My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain," she said. "My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping."

The 41-year-old New Jersey native retired from professional soccer in 2021, closing out her decorated career with 316 international appearances, the second-most in USWNT history, in addition to 134 international goals. A legend on the field, Lloyd walked away from the game with two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two FIFA Player of the Year awards.