{"id":324670,"date":"2025-12-03T09:36:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T09:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/324670\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T09:36:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T09:36:11","slug":"williams-responds-to-speculation-over-shock-tennis-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/324670\/","title":{"rendered":"Williams responds to speculation over shock tennis comeback"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n  An International <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heraldscotland.com\/sport\/tennis\/?ref=au\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Tennis<\/a> Integrity Agency (ITIA) spokesperson confirmed to the Press Association the 23-time grand slam singles champion re-registered with its testing body in October, triggering talk of a return.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  It is the first step towards possibly playing again although the 44-year-old would have to conform to strict whereabouts testing for a continuous six-month period before any competitive outing.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Such an outcome could see Williams back in action in mid-2026 although she wrote on X on Tuesday night: \u201cI\u2019m NOT coming back. This wildfire is crazy.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Williams, who played her first professional tennis match back in 1995, admitted the major motivation behind initially calling it quits three years ago was her desire to have a second child.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  She gave birth to Adira River Ohanian in August 2023, her second daughter having welcomed her first child Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr almost six years earlier with husband Alexis Ohanian.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Williams was in the early stages of pregnancy with Olympia when she won the 2017 Australian Open to move just one grand slam singles title behind the all-time record held by Margaret Court.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  She reached four more finals on her return from maternity leave, two at Wimbledon and two at the US Open, but was beaten in straight sets on each occasion.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Williams, who won her first major title in 1999 at the US Open as a 17-year-old, told Vogue in 2022 when she revealed plans to walk away from tennis: \u201cI\u2019d be lying if I said I didn\u2019t want (Court\u2019s) record.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  \u201cThe way I see it, I should have had 30-plus grand slams. I had my chances after coming back from giving birth.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  \u201cShoulda, woulda, coulda. I didn\u2019t show up the way I should have or could have. But I showed up 23 times, and that\u2019s fine. Actually it\u2019s extraordinary.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) spokesperson confirmed to the Press Association the 23-time grand slam singles champion&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-324670","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\/324670","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=324670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}