{"id":488297,"date":"2026-02-20T19:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T19:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/488297\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T19:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T19:34:08","slug":"venus-williams-earns-a-wild-card-return-to-indian-wells-for-singles-and-doubles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/488297\/","title":{"rendered":"Venus Williams earns a wild card return to Indian Wells for singles and doubles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">INDIAN WELLS, Calif. (AP) \u2014 Venus Williams is getting a wild card into the singles and doubles draws for the BNP Paribas Open next month in the Southern California desert.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The 45-year-old will be making her first appearance in the tournament since 2024, when she lost in the first round as a wild card. She\u2019s a three-time semifinalist, most recently in 2018. She boycotted the event between 2002 and 2016 after a controversial incident in 2001.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s an honor to award the first wild card of this year\u2019s event to Venus Williams,\u201d tournament director Tommy Haas said Friday. \u201dVenus is a legend of the game, and one of the most accomplished players our sport has ever seen.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">It will be Williams\u2019 10th career appearance in the tournament, which runs March 4-15. A year ago, she was given a wild card, but didn\u2019t accept it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m so excited to be heading back to Indian Wells and can\u2019t wait to return home to play in California,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">She most recently competed in the Australian Open, losing in the first round in singles and doubles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Williams is scheduled to compete in the ATX Open, a WTA 250 event in Austin, Texas, that starts Saturday and runs through March 1.<\/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":"INDIAN WELLS, Calif. (AP) \u2014 Venus Williams is getting a wild card into the singles and doubles draws&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-488297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488297","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=488297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}