{"id":263950,"date":"2025-11-05T09:06:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T09:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/263950\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T09:06:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T09:06:09","slug":"venus-williams-receives-auckland-classic-wildcard-aged-45-as-comeback-continues-tennis-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/263950\/","title":{"rendered":"Venus Williams receives Auckland Classic wildcard aged 45 as comeback continues | Tennis News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Venus Williams has been given a wild card for the ASB Classic in Auckland in January.<\/p>\n<p>The 45-year-old was coy on her plans after returning to the tour on home soil in the United States this summer but appeared sceptical about playing events abroad.<\/p>\n<p>However, tournament organisers announced the seven-time grand slam singles champion will travel to New Zealand for the Australian Open warm-up, which begins on January 5.<\/p>\n<p>        Twitter<\/p>\n<p>                This content is provided by Twitter, which may be using cookies and other technologies.<br \/>\n                To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.<br \/>\n                You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable Twitter cookies or to allow those cookies just once.<br \/>\n                You can change your settings at any time via the <a href=\"#privacy-options\">Privacy Options<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>                Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Twitter cookies.<br \/>\n                To view this content you can use the button below to allow Twitter cookies for this session only.<\/p>\n<p>                <a href=\"#\" class=\"ui-consent-roadblock-body__link ui-consent-roadblock-permanently\" data-single-click-vendor-name=\"twitter\" data-show-on-fallback=\"false\" data-testid=\"consent-roadblock-allow\">Enable Cookies<\/a><br \/>\n                <a href=\"#\" class=\"ui-consent-roadblock-body__link ui-consent-roadblock-once\" data-single-click-vendor-name=\"twitter\" data-testid=\"consent-roadblock-allow-once\">Allow Cookies Once<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Williams marked her return to action for the first time in 16 months victory over Peyton Stearns at the Washington Open in July.<\/p>\n<p>She followed that by going on to play Cincinnati and the US Open, where she reached the quarter-finals of the women&#8217;s doubles with Leylah Fernandez.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sdc-site-video__accessibility-message\" data-role=\"accessibility-message\">Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player<\/p>\n<p>                <img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/skysports-venus-williams_6970461.jpg\" alt=\"Venus Williams\"  aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"sdc-site-video__poster-img excluded-image\" data-testid=\"sitewide-video-poster\"\/><\/p>\n<p>              Venus Williams made a winning return to the sport in the Mubadala Citi DC Open as she and Hailey Baptiste progressed in the Women&#8217;s Doubles<\/p>\n<p>Williams has not played a tournament outside North America since appearing on the grass at Birmingham in 2023, while her last outing at the Australian Open, where she is a two-time finalist, was back in 2021.<\/p>\n<p>Watch the ATP and WTA Tour Finals, live on Sky Sports or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nowtv.com\/watch-sky-sports-online?DCMP=ilc_skysports_nc_articlelink\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">stream with NOW<\/a> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skysports.com\/football\/news\/11677\/12572660\/download-the-sky-sports-app-premier-league-goals-f1-race-control-and-more-at-your-fingertips\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sky Sports app<\/a>, giving Sky Sports customers access to over 50 per cent more live sport this year at no extra cost. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skysports.com\/football\/news\/11095\/13131189\/sky-sports-plus-launches-in-august-to-give-more-choice-to-fans-via-live-streams-app-and-new-channel\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Find out more here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venus Williams has been given a wild card for the ASB Classic in Auckland in January. The 45-year-old&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-263950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}