{"id":262869,"date":"2025-11-05T07:47:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T07:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/262869\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T07:47:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T07:47:08","slug":"venus-williams-given-wildcard-for-auckland-classic-in-january","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/262869\/","title":{"rendered":"Venus Williams given wildcard for Auckland Classic in January"},"content":{"rendered":"

Venus Williams has been awarded a wildcard for the Auckland Classic in January.<\/p>\n

The 45-year-old, who has won seven Grand Slam singles titles, made her comeback in July after 16 months without competing.<\/p>\n

She defeated fellow American Peyton Stearns<\/a>, then ranked 35th in the world, on her return at the Washington Open to become the second-oldest woman to win a WTA Tour-level singles match.<\/p>\n

A month later, she was given a wildcard into the main draw of the US Open and impressed in her three-set loss<\/a> to Czech 11th seed Karolina Muchova in the first round.<\/p>\n

Nicolas Lamperin, tournament director of the Auckland Classic, said: “Venus has had a profound influence on the evolution of women’s tennis and has inspired the next generation with her unshakeable passion for the sport.<\/p>\n

“All sports fans should take this opportunity to watch one of the sport’s all-time greats in action.”<\/p>\n

Williams is set to play at the Auckland Classic, a tournament she won in 2015, for the first time since 2023.<\/p>\n

It takes place from 5-11 January and precedes the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam of 2026, which is scheduled to start on 18 January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venus Williams has been awarded a wildcard for the Auckland Classic in January. The 45-year-old, who has won…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-262869","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}