{"id":264553,"date":"2025-11-05T15:29:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T15:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/264553\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T15:29:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T15:29:09","slug":"venus-williams-osaka-to-return-to-auckland-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/264553\/","title":{"rendered":"Venus Williams, Osaka to return to Auckland in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Venus Williams will compete in a record 33rd consecutive WTA season when she takes to the court in 2026. The seven-time major champion will return to the ASB Classic in January, the tournament announced on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Williams, 45, debuted in Oakland in 1994 and has remained a fixture on tour for three decades. After a 16-month layoff, she returned in July, defeating Peyton Stearns in Washington and stretching Karolina Muchova to three sets at the US Open.<\/p>\n<p>At No. 570, Williams is the oldest player to currently hold a WTA ranking &#8212; five years older than 40-year-olds Naoko Eto (No. 1,202) and Bethanie Mattek-Sands (No. 1,114).<\/p>\n<p>Williams is a former Auckland champion &#8212; she won the 46th of her 49 career titles there in 2015, defeating Caroline Wozniacki in the final &#8212; and will be making her sixth appearance at the tournament. She was also a finalist in 2013 and a quarterfinalist in 2018.<\/p>\n<p>The ASB Classic&#8217;s 2026 lineup will also feature another former World No. 1 in Naomi Osaka, this year&#8217;s runner-up, along with 17-year-old Guadalajara champion Iva Jovic and New Zealand&#8217;s highest-ranked player, Lulu Sun, who reached her second career WTA final two weeks ago in Guangzhou.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venus Williams will compete in a record 33rd consecutive WTA season when she takes to the court in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747,83],"class_list":["post-264553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264553","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=264553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}