'I am not retired': Serena Williams optimistic about tennis return after stepping away

Serena Williams on Monday said she has not retired from tennis and the chances of her returning are "very high" after she previously indicated she would step away from the sport after last month's U.S. Open.

"I am not retired," Williams said at a conference in San Francisco while promoting her investment company, Serena Ventures.

"The chances [of a return] are very high. You can come to my house; I have a court."

Williams, 41, said she was "evolving away from tennis" in an essay in August and, while she did not confirm the U.S. Open as her farewell event, she was given lavish tributes before each match in New York and waved an emotional goodbye after losing in the third round.

The 23-time Grand Slam champion, who took the tennis world by storm as a teenager and is considered by many the greatest of all time, said not preparing for a tournament after the U.S. Open did not feel natural to her.

"I still haven't really thought about [retirement]," Williams said.

Playing for fun feels 'really weird'

"But I did wake up the other day and go on the court and [considered] for the first time in my life that I'm not playing for a competition, and it felt really weird.

"It was like the first day of the rest of my life and I'm enjoying it, but I'm still trying to find that balance."

At the U.S. Open, Williams defeated No. 2 Anett Kontaveit in the second round and went toe-to-toe with Ajla Tomljanovic in the third round before dropping a lengthy singles match in front of an adoring and raucous crowd in New York.

WATCH | Williams loses to Tomljanović in possible final match:

Serena goes down swinging at U.S. Open in final match of her career

2 years ago

Duration 5:32

Tennis legend Serena Williams battled hard over more than three hours, but fell to Ajla Tomljanović 7-5, 6-7, 6-1.

An average of 1.21 million viewers tuned into the tournament, a 50 per cent increase over the previous year.

"I have never liked the word retirement," Williams wrote in the Vogue essay. "It doesn't feel like a modern word to me. I've been thinking of this as a transition, but I want to be sensitive about how I use that word, which means something very specific and important to a community of people. Maybe the best word to describe what I'm up to is evolution."

Williams' most recent major championship came at the 2017 Australian Open, when she played while pregnant with her daughter Olympia.