Sloane Stephens is married to ex-Sunderland star and had unusual career goal before tennis | Tennis | Sport

Sloane Stephens is a supremely successful American tennis player, carrying on in the footsteps of her legendary predecessors Venus and Serena Williams. The 29-year-old made history after becoming just the fourth African-American woman to win a Grand Slam singles title, following Althea Gibson and the Williams sisters.

Stephens was born in Plantation, Florida, and is of Trinidadian descent. Her athletic prowess is not surprising given both her parents were successful athletes themselves. Her late father, John, played football in the NFL and represented the New England Patriots, while her mother Sybil Smith is considered the greatest swimmer in the history of Boston University.

She started playing tennis at the age of nine, which is late by professional standards, but her talent was such that she was immediately advised to move out of California and join a big training institute.

Stephens moved to Florida in 2004 and eventually trained at both the Evert Tennis Academy and the Nick Saviano High Performance Tennis Academy.

After turning professional some years later, Stephens was tipped by many to be the next American star after Serena Williams.

And those predicting that feat were right as Stephens, at the height of her career, would become No 3 in the world. That ranking was backed after she claimed the 2017 US Open in dramatic fashion, as well as reaching the final of the 2018 French Open.

On a night where two African-American women not named Williams met in a Grand Slam final for the first time, Stephens put on a clinic in easily handling Madison Keys, 6-3, 6-0, in a match that took just 61 minutes.

“I was thinking just wow,” said Stephens, who then walked through the stands to embrace her coach and her mother. She added: “Winning a tournament is extremely special, but winning the US Open, being an American player, is even more incredible.”

Stephens was asked whether the win would give her a greater hunger for another Grand Slam title. “Did you see the check that lady handed me?” Stephens asked, before admitting: “If that doesn’t make you want to play tennis, I don’t know what will.”

The drive to continue playing tennis has seen the 29-year-old earn a staggering £12.4m ($15m) worth of prize money in her career. Her maiden Grand Slam win also earned her a career-best prize-pool of £3m ($3.7m).

In 2019, Stephens was the fifth-highest paid female athlete in the world, earning £8m ($9.6m), of which £4.5m ($5.5m) came in endorsements.

During that year, though, she fell out of the top 20 as she failed to reach the finals of any event on the WTA circuit. Stephens’s struggles continued in 2020, where she lost in the first round in most of her initial tournaments, including the Australian Open.

After the comeback – post the pandemic-forced lockdown – Stephens showed a gradual improvement in her form and stretched Serena Williams to three sets at the US Open before losing in the third round.

One thing that may surprise some about Stephens is that she didn’t dream of becoming a tennis champion – she instead wanted to become an embalmer.

She grew up surrounded by dead bodies. Her extended family owns a funeral home, so her formative years were spent in freezers filled with corpses, dressing bodies for funerals and driving the family hearses.

Interestingly, she revealed how she was once banned from greeting mourners because she once cried in front of a group of them. She gleefully lists cremation and embalming as one of her former interests.

In an interview with The Guardian, she revealed: “A lot of people are scared of dead bodies but you can’t be scared They’re like the only thing you shouldn’t be scared of because they can’t do anything to you. You should be scared of the people walking around because you don’t know what’s gonna happen, right?”

Away from the court, Sloane enjoys married life to professional footballer and Major League Soccer legend, Jozy Altidore. Intriguingly, she met Altidore for the first time in the fifth grade. The couple started dating in 2016 and became engaged in April 2019, before marrying in January 2022.

Altidore currently plays for Puebla in Mexico and is on loan from MLS side New England Revolution. The 33-year-old has played for clubs in Spain, England, Holland and Turkey during his career, most notably for Sunderland in the Premier League. On the international stage, he played 115 times for the USMNT during a stellar 12-year career and scored 42 goals.

Sloane and Jozy are one of the leading sporting power couples in the United States. As of January 2022, Altidore has an estimated net worth of ($8m) with an annual salary of ($2.2m).

Celebrity Net Worth also reports that Sloane has an estimated net worth of ($20m), thanks to her successful tennis career, as well as multiple brand endorsement deals with companies such as Nike, Rolex, Mercedes Benz and Under Armour.