Serena Williams

CTL-E-6091 · Person · other · 1981–present

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07312 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6091.

Serena Jameka Williams, born September 26, 1981, in Saginaw, Michigan, and raised in Compton, California, is an American tennis player who revolutionized the women's game with her power and won twenty-three Grand Slam singles titles, the most by any woman in the Open Era. Coached by her parents, Richard Williams and Oracene Price, alongside her elder sister Venus, she turned professional in 1995 and won her first major, the U.S. Open, in 1999 at seventeen. She held all four major singles titles at once twice, in 2002-2003 and again in 2014-2015, completed a career Golden Slam in singles and doubles, and won four Olympic gold medals. The WTA credits her with seventy-three singles titles, 319 weeks at world number one, and fourteen Grand Slam doubles titles with Venus. She passed Steffi Graf's Open Era record with her twenty-third major at the 2017 Australian Open. After stepping away following the 2022 U.S. Open, she returned to professional tennis in June 2026 at the Queen's Club Championships and Wimbledon.

The record

• Also known as: Serena Jameka Williams

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 4 — 747 Program, Wave 11; fourth Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Serena Williams entity in the live graph at 3,763 entities (exact / normalized / alias match + token containment; CLEAR). ID CTL-E-6091 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — Scan Tail Wave 3 packet ordered reserve, position 6 of 35 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #1496). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — Black America and diaspora canon under PPL-001: the dominant Black woman athlete of her era, of global cultural significance. Vital status: Living and, as of 2026, again active: Britannica (updated 2026-10-15) and the WTA (June 2026) both report her return to the professional tour in June 2026 after stepping away in 2022. STATISTICS — STATISTICS (sourced, dated): 23 Grand Slam singles titles — Australian Open 7, Roland Garros 3, Wimbledon 7, U.S. Open 6 (WTA, 2026-06-01); 319 weeks at world No. 1, 186 of them consecutive (WTA, 2026-06-01); 73 WTA singles titles and 858-156 singles record (WTA, 2026-06-01); 4 Olympic gold medals (WTA, 2026-06-01); 39 major titles overall — 23 singles, 14 doubles, 2 mixed (WTA summary in search results, accessed 2026-10-16). No conflict between Britannica (updated 2026-10-15) and WTA on the 23-title count. MEDIA: photo HELD (Serena Williams, age 9, training with her father Richard Williams on a tennis court in Compton, California, April 20, 1991, photograph captioned in Encyclopaedia Britannica's Serena Williams entry (accessed 2026-10-16); rights to be verified in a PHOTO-001 pass — no licence claimed here. — named candidate only; file-level rights verification per CTL-PHOTO-001 still required; no license claimed); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-6091-serena-williams.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged); map N/A (person record). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Persons carry no map in the packet standard.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created chart (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced statistics and timeline fact) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged.) | audio = HELD (No rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged.)

Referenced by

• Venus Williams — collaborated with → this record

Sources

• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Serena Williams" (updated 2026-10-15, accessed 2026-10-16) — born Sept. 26, 1981 in Saginaw, raised in Compton, 23 Grand Slam singles titles as Open Era women's record, turned pro 1995, first major 1999 U.S. Open at 17, 14 Grand Slam doubles titles with Venus, 2017 Australian Open as 23rd major, stepped away in 2022 and returned in 2026 at Queen's Club and Wimbledon — https://www.britannica.com/biography/Serena-Williams (primary source · build store)
• Women's Tennis Association, "The numbers behind Serena Williams' remarkable career" (published 2026-06-01, accessed 2026-10-16) — 23 Grand Slam singles titles (Australian Open 7, Roland Garros 3, Wimbledon 7, U.S. Open 6), 319 weeks at No. 1 including 186 consecutive, 73 singles titles, 4 Olympic gold medals (2000, 2008, 2012 singles and doubles), 14 Grand Slam doubles titles all with Venus, 858-156 singles record — https://wtatennis.com/news/4512405/the-numbers-behind-serena-williams-remarkable-career (primary source · build store)

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Record CTL-E-6091 · Combined Graph record U-07312 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 2 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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