{"id":263346,"date":"2025-11-05T12:55:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T12:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/263346\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T12:55:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T12:55:08","slug":"tennis-great-venus-williams-plans-to-start-33rd-straight-pro-season-in-auckland-in-january","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/263346\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennis great Venus Williams plans to start 33rd straight pro season in Auckland in January"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) \u2014 Tennis great Venus Williams plans to play for a 33rd straight season on the WTA Tour, starting in Auckland in January.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Organizers of the ASB Classic in New Zealand said Wednesday that the 45-year-old Williams would feature at their Jan. 5-11 event.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">It suggests the seven-time Grand Slam singles champion is preparing for the Australian Open later that month, a tournament she has twice lost in the final.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Williams made her pro tournament debut in 1994 in Oakland, California and has played at least two WTA events in each season since, the tour said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">She last played in singles at the U.S. Open in August, losing in three sets to 11th-seeded Karolina Muchova in the first round.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Ranked No. 570, Williams is five years older than the next oldest ranked players, Naoko Eto and Bethanie Mattek-Sands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">___<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">AP tennis: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/tennis<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) \u2014 Tennis great Venus Williams plans to play for a 33rd straight season on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-263346","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\/263346","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=263346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}