![\"Serena](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/53dfc86c85fbe3fec7e5e0c3066b1fcfae53d0e8.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTennis great Williams, 44, made her eagerly-anticipated comeback at the London venue on Tuesday, securing a win alongside Canadian teenager Mboko in their first doubles match.<\/p>\n
The duo defeated third seeds Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Erin Routliffe 7-6 (7\/2), 6-2.<\/p>\n
They are now scheduled to face Leylah Fernandez and Laura Siegemund on Thursday in the grass-court event, a warm-up for Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
Mboko, who received a bye into the round of 16 for the Queen’s singles, was down a set but leading Karolina Pliskova 4-3 in the second when she slipped behind the baseline trying to return a shot.<\/p>\n
The stumble effectively forced her into doing the splits, drawing a gasp from the crowd.<\/p>\n
Mboko was visibly upset as she spoke to the attending medical staff.<\/p>\n
She got to her feet but the official reason subsequently given for her retirement was a left knee injury, with Mboko heard saying on television cameras “there is no stability right now”.<\/p>\n
‘Such a shame’<\/p>\n
Mboko buried her face behind a towel as she continued to consult her team, before the umpire eventually announced her retirement, with the crowd giving the 19-year-old a sympathetic reception.<\/p>\n
“It’s such a shame,” said Pliskova, adding: “Of course, this is not the way we want to win. Hopefully she is going to be fine for Wimbledon.”<\/p>\n
If Mboko, ninth in the women’s singles rankings, withdraws from the doubles, that will be the end of Williams’s tournament as well.<\/p>\n
Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam singles champion, stunned the sporting world a week ago with her shock announcement she would compete at Queen’s, where she is only playing in the doubles.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Serena Williams made a winning return to tennis after four years away from the sport \u00a9 Adrian Dennis \/ AFP <\/p>\n
“It was so fun. I had so much fun playing with Victoria,” she said after Tuesday’s win.<\/p>\n
Williams said her decision to return to competitive tennis for the first time since losing to Ajla Tomljanovic at the 2022 US Open was inspired by a desire to play in front of her children.<\/p>\n
Her two young daughters, Olympia and Adira, as well as husband Alexis Ohanian were all courtside at Queen’s on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Williams is also scheduled to play doubles at the Berlin Open next week but has yet to decide if she wants to feature in the Wimbledon doubles.<\/p>\n
But she played down the prospect of featuring in the singles at Wimbledon — where she has won the title seven times — when she faced the media on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“Right now, no, I feel like I probably need to train a little bit more if I want to play singles and we’ll see if I get there, and if not, that’s not my journey right now,” said Williams.<\/p>\n
But Iva Jovic, speaking after defeating Alexandra Eala 6-2, 6-2 to book her place in the Queen’s quarter-finals, believes it won’t be long before Williams returns to singles action.<\/p>\n
“I think she will be back on the singles court very soon, as well. It’s exciting. She’s looking really good,” the 18-year-old American said.<\/p>\n
Mboko has called Williams her “idol”, and she said it was a memorable experience to play alongside her.<\/p>\n
“Of course even knowing I could play with Serena I’m so grateful, first of all,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I don’t play that much doubles, but I think sharing the court, I think I can learn a lot, even though we’re still competing. I just had so much fun today.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2026 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tennis great Williams, 44, made her eagerly-anticipated comeback at the London venue on Tuesday, securing a win alongside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-262331","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\/262331","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=262331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}