In her first Tour-level match for 1375 days, Serena Williams showed fans at The Queen\u2019s Club on Tuesday that she still has it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Williams, a former world No.1 and 23-time Grand Slam champion, has begun her comeback at the HSBC Championships, where she is playing doubles alongside Victoria Mboko. A player who was born eight years after the American won her first Wimbledon title in 1998 in mixed doubles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Playing in front of a packed stadium, Williams looked to be still in good shape despite having not played since the 2022 US Open. Alongside Mboko, the duo produced a 7-6(2), 6-2 win over third seeds\u00a0Nicole Melichar-Martinez\u00a0and\u00a0Erin Routliffe.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was so fun. I had so much fun playing with Victoria,\u201d 44-year-old Williams said afterwards.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was able to hold up the team on the big points and I could lean on her. It felt very natural.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams is already one of the most successful tennis players of all time with numerous records achieved. She has earned more than $94.8M in prize money, the most of any female player in history. She is also the only player \u2013 male or female \u2013 to complete a \u2018Career Golden Slam\u2019 (winning all four majors and Olympic gold) in both singles and doubles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So why has the mother-of-two decided to return to the Tour?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know [what\u2019s to come]. I had nothing better to do! I was sitting at home. I thought, why not?\u201d\u00a0She explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never got to play here (at The Queen\u2019s Club), it was always just the men. It feels very special to play somewhere so iconic. It\u2019s very cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grading her comeback performance as a \u2018C-minus,\u2019 Williams says she was able to manage her nerves by focusing on just having fun on court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As for the month ahead, Williams is keeping coy about a potential return to Wimbledon. At SW19, she has won 14 titles overall across singles (seven), doubles (six) and mixed doubles (one).\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cLike I said the other day, it\u2019s just a day at a \u200btime. I still have a little time to decide, and they have been great about giving me that space and time to decide,\u201d\u00a0she said.<\/p>\n
Williams and Mboko are scheduled to play their next match on Thursday against\u00a0Leylah Fernandez\u00a0and\u00a0Laura Siegemund.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In her first Tour-level match for 1375 days, Serena Williams showed fans at The Queen\u2019s Club on Tuesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-261641","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\/261641","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=261641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}