{"id":251220,"date":"2026-06-01T19:14:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T19:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/251220\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T19:14:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T19:14:18","slug":"serena-williams-will-return-to-tennis-with-queens-doubles-wild-card-ahead-of-wimbledon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/251220\/","title":{"rendered":"Serena Williams will return to tennis with Queen\u2019s doubles wild card ahead of Wimbledon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Serena Williams will return to tennis<\/a>, a little under four years after announcing she was \u201cevolving away\u201d from the sport she dominated.<\/p>\n

The 23-time Grand Slam singles champion will play Queen\u2019s, the prestigious grass-court warm-up for Wimbledon, as a doubles wild card, the tournament confirmed Monday. Her partner will be Canada\u2019s Victoria Mboko, tournament director Laura Robson said on TNT Sports.<\/p>\n

Whether or not Williams will use that tournament as a launchpad to play Wimbledon, the third Grand Slam of the year and one that she has won seven times, remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

\u201cQueen\u2019s Club feels like the perfect place to begin this next chapter,\u201d Williams said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrass has given me some of the most meaningful moments of my career, and I\u2019m excited to be back competing on one of the sport\u2019s most iconic stages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams, 44, became eligible for competition Feb. 22. She had to spend six months in tennis\u2019 anti-doping testing pool to return, and when Williams\u2019 name was seen in that pool<\/a>\u00a0last December, Williams posted on X: \u201cOmg yall I\u2019m NOT coming back. This wildfire is crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

But during an interview on the \u201cToday\u201d show in January, Williams was offered the chance to end speculation about her return<\/a>. Instead, she laughed and responded: \u201cIf I want to put it to bed \u2026 Listen, I want to go to bed \u2014 it\u2019s early.\u201d<\/p>\n

On both occasions, representatives for Williams did not respond to a request for comment. They did not respond to a request for comment about the Queen\u2019s and Wimbledon plans.<\/p>\n

Reentering the testing pool meant Williams had to comply with tennis\u2019 whereabouts rules, which include random drug testing and remaining in a certain place for an hour a day. Subjecting herself to those conditions was a huge indication that Williams was, at the very least, keeping the option of a return open.<\/p>\n

Williams will rely on wild cards for tournament entries and the expectation was that she would receive them from all over the tennis circuit. But the first came from a request. She remains one of the sport\u2019s biggest stars nearly four years after her last match, at the 2022 U.S. Open<\/a>, and any Grand Slam appearance \u2014 in New York, or elsewhere \u2014 would be a seismic moment regardless of its ultimate result.<\/p>\n

During the first stage of her career, Williams won 73 singles titles and picked up just under $95 million, a record that made her one of the biggest icons in the history of professional sport<\/a>. Now she returns to the arena.<\/p>\n

Mboko was asked about playing with the legend of the sport on Friday, and said it was up to the American to make any announcement. Mboko added that she had an existing relationship with Williams. \u201cMe and Serena have stayed in touch, which is really, really nice, because I really look up to her,\u201d Mboko said in a news conference. \u201cI mean, the fact that she even knows me is very, it\u2019s very exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mboko added that: \u201cShe\u2019s my idol, so it\u2019s really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Remembering watching her at the Canadian Open as a youngster, Mboko said: \u201cI think she was such a great role model and such an inspiration to so many young girls out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Queen\u2019s begins June 8.<\/p>\n

\u2018She\u2019s back to duke it out with the stars of today\u2019<\/p>\n

Analysis from senior tennis writer Charlie Eccleshare<\/p>\n

This may have been heavily trailed, but it\u2019s still a huge moment for the sport. Williams transcends tennis and now she\u2019s back to duke it out with the stars of today. It sounds like a tantalising hypothetical, but it is about to become reality.<\/p>\n

Williams is returning largely because she can, and at 44, surely won\u2019t be able to for much longer. She still hits regularly and will have seen how competitive her sister, Venus, now 45, initially was on her return to the sport<\/a> a year ago. Why not see if she can be even more so? Especially when her Grand Slam singles tally remains one behind Novak Djokovic and Margaret Court\u2019s record. She believes she can compete against today\u2019s top players on the women\u2019s tour.<\/p>\n

That dynamic will be fascinating, especially if she ends up playing singles. Seeing how Williams might fare against Aryna Sabalenka, Iga \u015awi\u0105tek, Coco Gauff, Elena Rybakina, Amanda Anisimova, Jessica Pegula and so many others. A WTA Tour already filled with elite players is about to get even richer.<\/p>\n

\"Serena<\/p>\n

\n Serena Williams\u2019 last professional match was at the 2022 U.S. Open. (Tim Clayton \/ Corbis via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Williams always left the door open for a return \u2014 speaking of \u201cevolving away\u201d from tennis rather than retiring when announcing her farewell in 2022 \u2014 and with her children a little older, at eight and two years old, she may see this as the right moment and last opportunity. Williams has proven herself the master of the comeback before \u2014 returning to the sport after various injuries to win Slams previously, and reaching four major finals after giving birth in September 2017, after\u00a0which she had a pulmonary embolism.<\/p>\n

Williams has also spoken about the benefits of taking GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, and in a series of interviews last summer said that she felt joint stress caused by her weight had prevented her from winning as many Grand Slam titles as she might have done.<\/p>\n

Then, a year after her cameo in Kendrick Lamar\u2019s halftime show at Super Bowl LIX, Williams appeared during Super Bowl LX<\/a> in a commercial for telehealth company Ro, advertising the effectiveness of the weight-loss drugs. In the advert, Williams delivered a voiceover saying she is \u201cmoving better\u201d and \u201cfeeling better,\u201d at one point directly injecting a syringe into her arm. Her husband, Alexis Ohanian, is an investor in Ro and serves on its board. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) says it is monitoring whether or not they will be classified as performance-enhancing.<\/p>\n

Having Williams back on the tour will be compelling enough. If she could get close to equalling Djokovic and Court\u2019s record, it would be one of the greatest stories in the history of sport.<\/p>\n

\u2018Venus and Serena broke the door down\u2019<\/p>\n

Analysis from senior tennis writer Matthew Futterman<\/p>\n

America has no shortage of candidates for its mythical sports Mount Rushmore. Williams is probably on it even if there are only two slots. Williams didn\u2019t just win, she changed her sport: How it\u2019s played, who plays it, who watches, and how they feel about the sport and themselves, and even the grand American experiment when they are doing so.<\/p>\n

Serena and Venus Williams were not the first Black American tennis stars<\/a>. There was Ora Washington and then Althea Gibson<\/a> and Arthur Ashe, who broke the color barrier at the Grand Slams, and then another generation of quality, including two Wimbledon finalists, Zina Garrison and MaliVai Washington.<\/p>\n

Before Serena and Venus came along, though, many Black players \u2014 including Gibson and Ashe \u2014 felt immense pressure to conform to the mores of tennis. To dress a certain way. To act a certain way. To wear their hair in a certain way. There is still some of that, but first Venus and then Serena helped to break the dam of expressing themselves and playing the sport on their terms.<\/p>\n

At the insistence of their father, Richard, the Williams sisters largely shunned junior tennis. They took the court wearing braids and beads. They celebrated loud. They played, and still play, unapologetically.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey came out there with the braids, wearing bright colors and all kinds of stuff,\u201d Roxanne Aaron, the president of the American Tennis Association, said during an interview in 2024. \u201cThey acted like they were revolutionizing tennis, like they were revolutionaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Resentment came out in unsubtle ways. When a chorus of boos and derogatory comments rained down on them after Venus pulled out of a BNP Paribas Open semifinal against her sister at Indian Wells in 2001, they didn\u2019t just call out the sport; they held it to account. Serena skipped the tournament for the next 14 years, Venus for 15.<\/p>\n

The Williams sisters ushered in what is one of the great transformations in tennis and perhaps all of American sport during the past 20 years. The top of American tennis is full of Black players, and nearly all of them \u2014 Madison Keys, Sloane Stephens, Coco Gauff, Hailey Baptiste, Frances Tiafoe, Ben Shelton and on \u2014 point to Serena and Venus as their inspirations. Not simply as players, but as people who gave them permission to be whoever they wanted to be and wear whatever they wanted to wear and act however they wanted to act on a tennis court.<\/p>\n

\u201cSerena and Venus said, \u2018I can be myself,\u2019\u201d James Blake, who retired in 2013, said during an interview in 2024.<\/p>\n

With the latest Williams comeback from Serena, many more little girls and boys can watch her. They can decide that this is how they, too, want to try to spend their lives. Few have the talent, but how many more will decide to approach their lives the way Serena does? Williams\u2019 biggest impact has been off the court. People who have never picked up a tennis racket view her as a role model.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say she has been perfect. There was the 2009 U.S. Open semifinal against Kim Clijsters, when she told a line judge who called her for a foot fault at a crucial moment that she wanted to shove a ball down her throat. \u201cHow many people yell at linespeople? I see it happening all the time,\u201d Williams said afterward.<\/p>\n

There was the 2018 final at the same tournament, when Williams was penalized for being coached during the match, back when that was prohibited \u2014 but also when it went unchecked in most cases. The match turned into something of a circus, overshadowing Naomi Osaka\u2019s breakthrough triumph at a major.<\/p>\n

Serena Williams on a tennis court is heat and history, power and initiative, intelligence and fight, and a good bit of glory as well, with more Grand Slam titles than almost anybody and the most for women\u2019s singles in the Open Era. She is what every sport craves: A story bigger than tennis with a protagonist who has always had the power to change the world with her racket.<\/p>\n

Can she still do that? There will likely be some losses in whatever shape this comeback takes. But by putting herself out there again, at 44, she will bend the sport and the world toward her a little more. The story, and the history, continue. And may it ever be thus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Serena Williams will return to tennis, a little under four years after announcing she was \u201cevolving away\u201d from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[17,15558,9,24,63,15559,122,124,123,23,15547,2250],"class_list":["post-251220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-culture","tag-global-sports","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-olympics","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-sports-business","tag-tennis","tag-top-sports-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}