Serena Williams reflected on her return to professional tennis and explained why she ended her retirement following her doubles victory alongside Victoria Mboko at the HSBC Championships on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“It was so fun. I had so much fun playing with Victoria,” Williams said after the match, per Steven Griffiths<\/a>\u00a0of the AFP (h\/t Yahoo Sports). “I never got to play here before, it was always just the men. It feels really special to play somewhere so iconic.<\/p>\n “I had nothing better to do! I got tired of sitting at home. My kids are out of school for the summer, so why not?”<\/p>\n Williams and Mboko secured a 7-6(2), 6-2 win over Erin Routliffe and Nicole Melichar-Martinez at Queen’s Club, moving on to the quarterfinals. <\/p>\n It marked Williams’ first professional match since the 2022 US Open, as the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion previously said that she was stepping away from the sport. <\/p>\n “I’m here to tell you that I’m evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me,” Williams wrote in a first-person article<\/a> published in\u00a0Vogue in Aug. 2022.<\/p>\n