Serena Williams, the best women’s tennis player of this era and one of the world’s most prominent athletes, confirmed on Wednesday that she was pregnant and expecting her first child later this year.
Williams, 35, has not played a match since winning her 23rd Grand Slam singles title at the Australian Open on Jan. 28, when she was already close to two months pregnant.
More major titles will have to wait, if they happen at all. Williams will turn 36 in September, but her spokeswoman Kelly Bush Novak said that while Williams would miss the rest of the 2017 season, she intended to return to the circuit in 2018.