{"id":469287,"date":"2026-02-09T22:22:47","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T22:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/469287\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T22:22:47","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T22:22:47","slug":"serena-williams-american-great-eligible-to-return-on-22-february","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/469287\/","title":{"rendered":"Serena Williams: American great eligible to return on 22 February"},"content":{"rendered":"

Serena Williams will be eligible to return to tennis from Sunday, 22 February – but it is unclear if or when the American great will make a comeback.<\/p>\n

Williams’ name appeared on the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) reinstatements list on Monday, meaning she can enter tournaments from the date specified, the organisation confirmed to BBC Sport.<\/p>\n

However, the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion has not announced an official return after ending her career at the 2022 US Open.<\/p>\n

BBC Sport has contacted Williams’ agent and the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) for comment.<\/p>\n

Retired players can be reinstated and return to sanctioned events once they have made themselves available for out-of-competition drug testing for at least six months.<\/p>\n

In December, the ITIA confirmed to BBC Sport<\/a> that Williams was back on the list of players registered for the drug testing pool.<\/p>\n

Once a player is in the pool, they must let testers know where they will be for one hour of every day.<\/p>\n

Hours later, Williams, 44, posted on social media: “I’m NOT coming back. This wildfire is crazy.”<\/p>\n

She then refused to rule out a comeback<\/a> at the end of January, telling the Today Show: “I don’t know, I’m just going to see what happens.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Serena Williams will be eligible to return to tennis from Sunday, 22 February – but it is unclear…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-469287","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\/469287","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=469287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}