{"id":469690,"date":"2026-06-10T05:54:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T05:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/469690\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T05:54:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T05:54:13","slug":"serena-williams-defeats-kiwi-doubles-rival-in-tennis-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/469690\/","title":{"rendered":"Serena Williams defeats Kiwi doubles rival in tennis return"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four years after she last picked up a racket in anger Serena Williams has made her return to professional tennis<\/a>, and for much of the afternoon at Queen’s Club in London it was like she had never been away.<\/p>\n

Pairing up with Canadian teenager Victoria Mboko the 44-year-old served powerfully and delivered some stunning returns as the duo beat third seeds Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Kiwi Erin Routliffe<\/a> 7-6 (7-2) 6-2.<\/p>\n

In front of her daughters Olympia and Adira the 23-time grand slam singles champion received a rapturous reception in early evening sun by a home crowd already cheered by English successes.<\/p>\n

\"Serena<\/p>\n

Serena Williams plays against Nicole Melichar-Martinez of Canada and Erin Routliffe of NZ during their doubles match. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Williams last played professionally at the US Open in September 2002, going out to Ajla Tomljanovic in the third round in New York in front of more than 20,000 people – a night the Australian has said she’ll always remember.<\/p>\n

The long break hardly seemed to have affected her as Williams secured two of the pair’s points enroute to a first-game victory, then immediately broke serve in the next before reaching a 182km\/h in her first service game.<\/p>\n

Williams subsequently dropped her second service game to level the first set up, despite cranking it up to 191kmh but the north American pair easily won the tie-break.<\/p>\n

\"Serena<\/p>\n

Serena Williams plays against Nicole Melichar-Martinez of Canada and Erin Routliffe of NZ during their doubles match. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

They cruised through the second set. Singles, with so much more ground to cover, would be a different proposition but in doubles the Williams-Mboko pairing looks formidable.<\/p>\n

“It was so much fun, it felt so \u200cnatural playing with Vicky,” a beaming Williams said on court. “I guess I’ve got nothing better to do, I’m tired of sitting at home, my kids are out of school this summer so why not?”<\/p>\n

Asked if she will compete at Wimbledon<\/a> Williams said she still had not decided.<\/p>\n

The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including Trump threatens retaliation after a helicopter\u2019s shot down, and a man flees from Police into an alligator infested swamp. (Source: Breakfast)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four years after she last picked up a racket in anger Serena Williams has made her return to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,64,69,97379,213],"class_list":["post-469690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-north-america","tag-nz","tag-sport-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}