Venus Ebony Starr Williams (born June 17, 1980) is an American professional tennis player. She has been ranked World No. 1 (List of WTA number 1 ranked players) by the Womens Tennis Association (WTA) on three separate occasions; as of November 2, 2009, she is ranked World No. 6. She is the reigning Australian Open, Wimbledon (The Championships, Wimbledon) and US Open doubles champion and has won 19 Grand Slam (Grand Slam (tennis)) titles: seven in womens singles, ten in womens doubles and two in mixed doubles. In addition, she has won three Olympic gold medals, one in womens singles and two in womens doubles. In 2005 Tennis Magazine (Tennis (magazine)) ranked her as the 25th-best player in 40 years. Since this ranking however, she has won an additional three Grand Slam singles titles.

Williams reached the US Open finals at the age of 17, becoming the first woman since 1978 to reach a US Open (US Open (tennis)) final on her d�but and was the first unseeded female US Open finalist since 1958. After her breakthrough, Williams breached the top ten on the WTA world rankings for the first time in 1998 when she won the Lipton Championships in Miami. Between 2000 and 2001, Williams won four of the six Grand Slam tournaments she entered. Her 35-match winning streak remains the longest of the millennium. She became the World No. 1 for the first time in February 2002.

Williams suffered an abdominal injury in mid-2003 which prevented her from playing. Upon her return in 2004, she experienced inconsistent results. In 2005, she won her first Grand Slam title in four years at Wimbledon (2005 Wimbledon - Womens Singles), but since then she suffered from a wrist injury and only played six events in 2006. Her world rankings suffered as a result, being World No. 54 in February 2006. However, Williams eventually won another Grand Slam title at the Wimbledon (2007 Wimbledon Championships - Womens Singles) in 2007, becoming the lowest-seeded and lowest-ranked Wimbledon champion in history. Williams returned to the top ten later that year and has since competed in every Grand Slam event. She returned to the top three for the first time in six years in May 2009.

Williams is the elder sister of fellow and current World No. 1 professional female tennis player Serena Williams. The sisters have played each other in 21 professional matches dating back to 1998, with Venus winning 10 matches played between them as of July 2009. Their meeting in the final of the 2001 US Open was the first Grand Slam final contested by two sisters in the open era (History of tennis#Open Era). As of July 2009, they have met in eight Grand Slam finals, with Venus winning two of those. Between the 2002 French Open and the 2003 Australian Open, the sisters met in all four Grand Slam finals, the first time in the open era that the same two players had contested four consecutive Grand Slam finals.