When Serena Williams returned to tennis after becoming a mother, it wasn’t just a comeback…

When Serena Williams returned to tennis after becoming a mother, it wasn’t just a comeback.

It was a different kind of challenge entirely.

New priorities. New pressures. Same stage.

And still competing at the highest level.

That’s the part people don’t always talk about—

what it takes *off* the court to still perform *on* it.

n a bright, cloudless early-August day in Silicon Valley, Serena Williams opens the back door of the Spanish-style home she shares with her husband, tech entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, and walks down a flower-lined path to her office. Lemon trees bloom near the entrance to the backyard tennis court; in the clear distance, airplanes slip over the San Francisco Bay. Serena–who long ago ascended into the pantheon of stars known by a single name–swaps her pink Crocs for sneakers, and grabs a broom and dustpan to sweep pine needles off the hard court.

Just three nights earlier, Serena suffered the worst defeat of her 23-year professional career, a 6-1, 6-0 drubbing at the hands of Johanna Konta in the opening round of a U.S. Open tune-up tournament down the road in San Jose. That it was only her fifth tournament since giving birth to her daughter in September–or that in the fourth, Wimbledon, she made it to the finals in one of the most spectacular displays of will, skill and grit in the history of the game–didn’t make the loss hurt any less.