Nothing feels successful when you're sad inside

Tennis star Venus Williams tells PRUDENCE WADE why happiness is more important than Grand Slam wins

- PRUDENCE WADE

VENUS WILLIAMS has spent the past three decades as a professional tennis player and the sport has completely consumed her life.

"As an athlete, as a tennis player, you're playing 10 months a year what balance is that?" Venus exclaims.

She turned pro in 1994, going on to win a total of seven Grand Slam singles titles including Wimbledon five times. While her competition schedule isn't quite as intense as it used to be, Venus, 44, hasn't retired from pro tennis just yet - last year marked the 24th time she competed in the US Open.

She last played tennis on the world stage at the Miami Open, back in March, saying: "Then I took some time off the court to do all kinds of things - I'm like, I need to go back to tennis so I can have some time to myself!" Nowadays, her endeavours outside tennis include an interior design company and a plant-based protein shake brand called Happy Viking. In June this year, she even walked in the Vogue World fashion event in Paris wearing a custom outfit made of upcycled tennis bags.

Looking back at her past few tennis-free months, she says: "I think, even this year, I definitely pushed too hard, and it left me feeling very unmotivated, even though I had stuff to do."

She says she's never got to that stage before, and it was "a big learning experience for me", spurring her to think about "what maybe I could have done better looking back".

What Venus has learned from her years on the pro circuit is that you can't keep striving for a sense of equilibrium that likely won't come.