When Serena Williams stepped away from tennis in 2022, she very deliberately said, writing in Vogue (paywall), that she "never liked the word 'retirement.' "
"Maybe the best word to describe what I'm up to is 'evolution.' I'm here to tell you that I'm evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me," she wrote, in what served as her announcement that she was, at least temporarily, leaving the profession.
