Serena Williams has denied she is exploring a return to professional tennis at the age of 44 next season despite re-registering for the sport’s anti-doping testing pool.
The retired 23-times grand-slam singles champion, who is regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, informed the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) in October that she wished to subject herself to regular drug tests out of competition. This theoretically means she could play official tournaments from April 2026 onwards, including Wimbledon in June.
Williams has lost 14kg (just over 2st) this year and spoken openly about using GLP-1 weight-loss medication
STEFANIE KEENAN/GETTY IMAGES FOR BABY2BABY
However, about four hours after it emerged that she was back on the ITIA’s list of active players, Williams posted on her X account that she is not planning a comeback.“Omg yall I’m NOT coming back,” Williams wrote. “This wildfire is crazy.”
It is unclear why Williams has re-registered with the ITIA. The Times has contacted her representative for comment. She officially retired after the 2022 US Open and wasted no time in immediately removing herself from the pool of players available for testing.
Since then, Williams has noticeably never ruled out the prospect of a comeback in several interviews, while also occasionally posting videos of herself hitting balls on the court.
One theory on Tuesday was that Williams may be interested in playing doubles with her sister, Venus, who continues to play sporadically on the WTA Tour at the age of 45, but she has appeared to end any chance of this.
The ITIA’s testing pool consists mostly of top 100 players, as well as those who are potentially preparing for a return to professional tournaments after retirement. Those on the list must nominate an hour and a location each day at which they are available for a visit by a drug tester.
Williams, who is married to the American entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, gave birth to her first daughter, Olympia, in September 2017. Her second daughter, Adira, was born after she retired in August 2023.
Williams has spoken openly about using weight-loss medication to lose 14kg over the past year and her former coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, has revealed the pair “had a few fights” about her weight after the birth of Olympia, adding that if she had been in the condition she is in now “the results would have been better”.
In an interview with Vogue magazine, published on Thursday, Williams revealed that she has been taking the GLP-1 agonist Zepbound.
“I’ve heard negative comments, along with a tremendous amount of positive comments, about my body my entire life,” Williams said. “For lack of a better way to say it, I don’t really care what people are saying about my body any more. But what is important to me is transparency.”
Williams won at Indian Wells in March 1999 and added her first grand-slam singles title six months later, aged 17, by defeating Martina Hingis in the US Open final
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In the interview, she opened up about her struggles with losing weight after pregnancy, going on to say that the medication has made her feel “more like her old self”.
“There’s a scene in my HBO documentary where you see my coach telling me, ‘You have to lose weight,’” she added. “But it was so hard after I had [my first daughter] Olympia. I was literally on the court every day, doing nothing else. I had been the ultimate super-athlete, always in competition and being super-healthy my entire life, but I just could never get back to where I needed to be, no matter what I did.
“My whole life is being in the gym, working out, running, training, dancing, every single thing you can think of. I would always get to a certain point on the scale, but I could never get below that. That’s when I decided that it was time to try something different and got on the GLP-1.”
BBC to show ‘Battle of the Sexes’ The upcoming “Battle of the Sexes” between the women’s world No1 Aryna Sabalenka and the former men’s world No13 Nick Kyrgios will be broadcast on BBC 1 this month.
The match will take place at Dubai’s Coca Cola Arena on December 28, shortly before the 2026 season begins in Australia, and will be presented by Clare Balding with Andrew Cotter leading the commentary.
It is a nod to the 1973 encounter between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King, which was won by the former women’s world No1. Sabalenka, 27, won her fourth grand-slam singles title at this year’s US Open, while Kyrgios has only won one match this year as he continues his comeback having been sidelined with a wrist injury.