Serena Williams wants to be a doctor

Serena Williams has revealed that she has been studying for a pre-med degree as she plans to possibly go into medical school when she retires.

The 33-year-old is bidding for the third leg of a calendar Grand Slam at Wimbledon and opens her campaign today against Russian Margarita Gasparyan.

But Williams will have surprised some with details of her new studies at the University of Massachusetts, which was prompted by her sister Venus’s struggles with auto-immune condition Sjogren’s syndrome.

Williams told the Telegraph: “After what my sister went through, I wanted to really focus on holistic medicine.
“And then I was really interested in learning things from the earth that can heal us. Long-term healing. There’s so much cancer that is going around now. So it’s really an interest in that.

“And also when I go to Africa, with the work I do with my schools there, it’s very useful to have something like that so that I know more about the health issues.”

Williams does not intend to go into the medical labs until she ends her playing career, however. She said: ‘I am leaving all the classes at the school for when I decide to retire.”