Serena Williams won the Australian Open in 2017 when she was pregnant. Her daughter, Olympia, is now 4 (she turns 5 on Thursday), and was at Arthur Ashe Stadium on Monday night to watch her mother compete.
She also nearly stole the show on the ESPN broadcast.
As Williams hit aces and swing volleys, which have come to define her game and legacy, Olympia sat nearby in Williams’s player’s box. She donned braids with white beads on them, paying homage to a style her mother wore when she won her first U.S. Open in 1999. Olympia also wore a black bedazzled top that matched the one her mother wore on court.
Olympia — whose full name is Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr. — watched Williams play, but also spent time going back and forth between playing with a woman’s hair and sitting in her father’s lap, clapping.
Williams began her farewell essay in Vogue with an anecdote about Olympia and how she felt she needed to choose between tennis and family:
