Serena Williams will take part in her first professional tennis match in nearly four years on Tuesday after organisers confirmed the order of play at London’s Queen’s Club. <\/p>\n
Granted a wildcard into the women’s doubles of the WTA tournament, Williams and Canadian teenager Victoria Mboko will face third seeds Erin Routliffe and Nicole Melichar-Martinez in the grass-court event, a warm-up for Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Williams is one of tennis’ all-time greats with 23 Grand Slam singles titles to her credit.<\/p>\n
The 44-year-old American last played at the 2022 US Open when she said she was “evolving away from tennis”.<\/p>\n
Williams’ return is fuelled by a desire for her two young daughters with husband Alexis Ohanian to see her in a competitive environment before she finally hangs up her racquet for good.<\/p>\n
“It’s really about the kids seeing me play,” Williams told reporters at Queen’s on Sunday. “Olympia is a little bit older, Adira is very young. It’s components like that.”<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
After competing at Queen’s, Williams will take part in the doubles at the Berlin Open from June 15-21.<\/p>\n
In her first press conference since announcing her return, Williams played down suggestions she would extend her return to singles competition.<\/p>\n
But, with Wimbledon looming later in June, she did not completely rule out the possibility of featuring at a tournament she has won seven times.<\/p>\n
“For singles, I can’t say ‘yeah’ and I can’t say ‘no’,” explained Williams. “Right now, no. I feel like I probably need to train a little bit more if I want to play singles.<\/p>\n
“We will see if I get there and if not, it is not my journey right now.”<\/p>\n
jdg\/pb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Serena Williams will take part in her first professional tennis match in nearly four years on Tuesday after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[43883,101083,9,24,100659,63,97983,122,124,123,82657,96616],"class_list":["post-259876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-alexis-ohanian","tag-henry-nicholls","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nicole-melichar-martinez","tag-nyc","tag-queen39s-club","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-serena-williams","tag-women39s-doubles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259876","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=259876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}