Serena Williams reveals heartbreak at sister’s death

Serena Williams, one half of the most dominant family in women's tennis in the Open era, has revealed in an interview how the murder of her eldest sister Yetunde drove her into a deep depression, and how she pulled herself back into Grand Slam-winning form through humanitarian work in Africa.

Yetunde was murdered in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles on September 14, 2003. She was targeted because her new boyfriend was a gang member, and she was shot on the streets of Compton where the young Serena and sister Venus had practised on public courts, their father brushing off the broken glass so they could play.

"I was sharing a room with Lyn [one of five Williams sisters] in Toronto when I found out," Williams tells Matthew Syed in the Times. "We just couldn't take it in. I had been talking to Tunde on the phone earlier that day and she had been real excited about what was going on in her life, and mine. I just couldn't make sense of it. It was like something out of a dream."

Serena returned to the tennis tour after a brief hiatus, but soon found the grief was too much. She plummeted down the rankings, hitting Number 140 in the world, and finally decided two years later that enough was enough. "I needed to take time out from tennis because I had an injury to my leg and had all sorts of emotional and spiritual wounds," she says. "I started to see a therapist because I was in a bad place and needed to talk things through."

Williams also went to Ghana and Senegal in 2006, where she ran tennis clinics and gave out polio vaccines. "It was unbelievable to think that my ancestors had endured such suffering before they even got to America and were put into bondage," she tells Syed. "It put things in perspective, but it also made me think. If my people could endure that kind of suffering, I could endure anything."

Serena returned for the first Grand Slam of 2007 - the Australian Open - ranked at 81 and with few believing that she could come back successfully. The press Down Under didn't make the return any easier, picking up on the extra pounds that Williams was carrying: "One of them called me a 'fat cow'. I was like, 'Is this for real?' It wasn't easy."

She let her actions on the court answer her critics, powering to the final and demolishing the Russian 6-1, 6-2 in the final. Since then she has won three of the subsequent 11 Grand Slams (sister Venus and Justine Henin are next in the list with two titles apiece over the last three years), and seemed on course for the US Open until she exploded during the semi-final, verbally abusing a court official for foot-faulting her during her defeat by Kim Clijsters, the eventual tournament victor.

"It was out of character and I really regret it," she says. "I am a passionate person and I just lost it because it was an iffy call at a key moment. I wrote the line judge a really long letter of apology and she understood." ·