Serena Williams Makes Return To Tennis At 44

Former World No 1 and 23-time grand slam champion Serena Williams has confirmed her return to the sport after receiving a doubles wildcard to play at the HSBC Championships the Queen’s Club in west London, which starts on Monday 8 June, ahead of a likely return at Wimbledon later in the month.

Williams, who was last seen in competitive action almost four years ago before announcing her retirement, is set to play doubles at Queen’s with Canadian teenager Victoria Mboko, who idolised Williams growing up, and may play singles at Wimbledon.

Williams, one of the sport’s defining champions and greatest players of all time, has not played competitively since the 2022 US Open, where she reached the third round in a glittering farewell. Before that tournament, the American carefully said she would be “evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me”, rather than ever using the word “retirement.

Williams, who gave birth to her second child in 2023, sparked speculation that she would be returning to tennis when she reentered the International Tennis Integrity Agency’s anti-doping testing pool last year, and she has been cleared to compete competitively since 22 February.

A seven-time Wimbledon singles champion, as well as a six-time Wimbledon doubles champion with her sister Venus, the Championships are one of the most important tournaments in her hall-of-fame career. Her last appearance at Wimbledon came in a first-round defeat to Harmony Tan in 2022.

Serena Williams made her last appearance at Wimbledon four years ago, losing in the first round to unseeded player Harmony Tan.

This comeback is being seen as a major boost for women’s tennis, which many feel is currently offering more drama and intrigue than the men’s game. Whether this is a one-off appearance or the beginning of a longer return remains to be seen.

Serena Williams is widely considered one of the greatest athletes of all time, holding the Open Era record of 23 Grand Slam singles titles.

Over a dominant professional career spanning from 1995 to 2022, she revolutionised women’s tennis with her powerful style of play, spent 319 weeks as the world No. 1, and completed a rare Career Golden Slam in both singles and doubles.

As a pioneering Black woman in a historically white-dominated sport, she shattered systemic barriers, advocating fiercely for equal prize money and maternal health rights for female athletes.