{"id":324594,"date":"2025-12-04T10:04:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T10:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/324594\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T10:04:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T10:04:13","slug":"serena-williams-has-taken-the-first-step-toward-a-comeback-to-tennis-by-registering-for-drug-tests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/324594\/","title":{"rendered":"Serena Williams has taken the first step toward a comeback to tennis by registering for drug tests"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Howard Fendrich<\/p>\n

(AP) \u2013 Serena Williams<\/a>\u00a0has taken the first step that would be required ahead of a comeback to tennis, registering with the sport\u2019s drug-testing body, a spokesman for the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The\u00a023-time Grand Slam champion<\/a>, one of the greats of the game, has not competed\u00a0since bidding farewell at the 2022 U.S. Open<\/a>. At the time, Williams said she didn\u2019t want to use the word \u201cretiring\u201d and instead declared that she was \u201cevolving\u201d away from tennis.<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear when or where \u2014 or even if \u2014\u00a0Williams actually will play again<\/a>. Her agent did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Williams, who is now 44, was\u00a0one of the biggest stars of any sport<\/a>, a dominant talent on the court and still someone drawing attention away from it. If she does end up returning to the tour, it would be a significant story line.<\/p>\n

Her decision to place her name back in the testing pool with the ITIA, which oversees anti-doping and anti-corruption efforts, was first reported by Bounces.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is on the list and back in the testing pool,\u201d ITIA spokesman Adrian Bassett wrote to The Associated Press on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Athletes returning to testing need to provide information on their whereabouts \u2014 details on their location when they are not at an official event and times when they are available to give samples. Someone who retires while they are on the list and later comes back needs to be available for testing for six months before they are allowed to return to competition.<\/p>\n

Williams\u2019 older sister, Venus<\/a>, returned to competition this July at age 45 after nearly 1 1\/2 years away from the tour; she never had announced her retirement. At the U.S. Open, Venus became the oldest player to play singles at the American Grand Slam tournament since 1981.<\/p>\n

When Venus, a seven-time major singles champion, came back at the DC Open,\u00a0she spoke about wishing Serena would join her back on tour<\/a>. They claimed 14 Grand Slam doubles titles as a pair.<\/p>\n

\u201cI keep saying to my team: The only thing that would make this better is if she was here. Like, we always did everything together, so of course I miss her,\u201d Venus said at the time when asked about a video on social media that showed Serena swinging a racket. \u201cBut if she comes back, I\u2019m sure she\u2019ll let y\u2019all know.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Howard Fendrich has been the AP\u2019s tennis writer since 2002. Find his stories here:\u00a0https:\/\/apnews.com\/author\/howard-fendrich<\/a>. More AP tennis:\u00a0https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/tennis<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By\u00a0Howard Fendrich (AP) \u2013 Serena Williams\u00a0has taken the first step that would be required ahead of a comeback…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[143555,84662,7498,49,48,143556,61825,5385,82,593,143557,40531,11367],"class_list":["post-324594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-adrian-bassett","tag-ap","tag-bounces","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-drug-tests","tag-howard-fendrich","tag-serena-williams","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-the-associated-press","tag-u-s-open","tag-venus-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324594","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=324594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}