Serena Williams is keeping the door open for a return to singles competition as she prepares to play her first professional tennis tournament in nearly four years.<\/p>\n
The 23-time Grand Slam champion is making her comeback this week in the doubles draw at Queen\u2019s Club in west London. Williams is partnering with 19-year-old Canadian Victoria Mboko, but she indicated during a news conference that her ultimate goals might stretch beyond doubles. Williams has not played competitively since the 2022 U.S. Open.<\/p>\n
Williams said she intends to train more and hopes to play singles down the line, though she is taking things one step at a time. The 44-year-old noted that she missed the atmosphere of the game and wants to experience the sport in a new way with her family. Her youngest daughter is 2 years old and has never seen her mother play professional tennis.<\/p>\n
As a seven-time Wimbledon singles champion who spent 319 weeks as the top-ranked player in the world, Williams explained that she does not feel pressure to prove anything. She noted that she has won more than most people win in a lifetime, meaning everything from this point forward is simply a bonus.<\/p>\n
Williams began practicing on the grass courts last week after re-entering the anti-doping testing program late last year. She became eligible to compete again in February.<\/p>\n
When Williams stepped away from tennis in 2022, she chose to call the decision an evolution away from the sport rather than a retirement. Her return takes place at a historic venue, as women’s professional tennis returned to Queen\u2019s Club in 2025 for the first time since 1973.<\/p>\n
The partnership is a massive opportunity for Mboko, who is rising through the WTA Tour rankings. Mboko revealed that Williams reached out to her directly during a tournament in France, inviting her to play doubles. Mboko grew up watching Williams on television and considered her a childhood idol.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Serena Williams is keeping the door open for a return to singles competition as she prepares to play…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-259369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259369","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=259369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}