US Open was the first Grand Slam that Serena Williams won in her career, in both the singles and doubles events. The American Slam also offers the highest pay outs from amongst all four Majors and so it doesn’t come as a surprise that Williams made a fortune there over the course of her career. Arguably, Williams continues to be the richest women’s player ever from tennis, earning nearly $95 million in prize money across her 24-year career. Over 20% of those earnings came at her home Grand Slam. That is around a massive $21 million.
Serena Williams retired last year from the game, with the US Open 2022 being her final swansong. She desired to bid goodbye in front of her home crowd in New York City and rightly so. Having won 39 Grand Slams in total, 9 of those came in NYC alone. And with the US Open being the highest payer in prize money out of the 4 Grand Slams in a year, a massive chunk of her winnings came from the tournament.
Serena’s humble beginnings
Now that number is huge since it is nearly 1/4th of her career prize money amount. Serena Williams won 6 women’s singles titles in her career at the US Open. While she won 2 women’s doubles titles, with as one would rightly guess, her sister Venus Williams. The other title she won as actually her very first back in 1998, in the mixed doubles competition with Max Mirnyi.
For the 1998 win, she approximately received $50,000 while in the singles round, she could only reach the Round of 32. That fetched her just $30,000, which adds up to $80,000. These were humble beginnings but 12 months later was actually when Serena Williams announced herself to the tennis world.
Williams was rewarded with a whopping $750,000 back in 1999 for winning her first women’s singles title there. The Williams family had a great Grand Slam as Serena also teamed up with Venus to win the 1999 women’s doubles title too, for which Serena individually received $82,500.
Her total earnings at the US Open touched the $1.5 million mark after making it to the 2000 US Open quarterfinals and the 2001 final. But Serena avenged her 2001 loss in a rematch of that final in 2002, which ensured that she bagged a cool $900,000 paycheck.
Between 2003-2007 though, Serena Williams blew cold at the US Open as she had to settle with Round of 16 and quarterfinals appearances. Those only fetched her a total of $396,945. However, her best was yet to come.
