Photo: Robert Prange/Getty Images
It’s a Serena Williams summer. Less than a week after announcing that she and her sister, Venus, would be playing women’s doubles at Wimbledon, Williams revealed on Sunday that she would be playing singles as well. For both her doubles and singles entries, Williams is playing via a wild-card entry.
As recently as last week, Williams was unsure if she would play singles at Wimbledon. At a press conference following her opening-round doubles match loss at the Berlin Open, the tennis star seemed on the fence. When told that there was still a wild-card slot in the singles tournament, she replied, “Oh my gosh, there are some left?”
“Do you think I’m ready for singles?” Williams asked a reporter, before asking her doubles partner, Karolina Muchova, what she thought.
“I think I would be interested in it,” Muchova replied, speaking for the rest of us.
“That’s the question of the hour, right?” Williams said. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I wonder why there’s — I don’t know.”
She has since figured it out. Williams last played a singles match in 2022, when she lost to Ajla Tomljanović in the third round of the U.S. Open. At the time, she opted not to say that she was retiring, but that she was “evolving away from tennis.” This summer, she’s been evolving back toward the sport. She won a doubles match with Victoria Mboko at Queen’s Club last week before the pair had to withdraw after Mboko sustained a knee injury; then she and Muchova played at the Berlin Open, losing to Erin Routliffe and Giuliana Olmos.
If Williams, who’s 45, wins a singles match at Wimbledon, she will become the fourth-oldest woman to do so at a major. Of course, Williams has a long history of winning at Wimbledon. She’s won the women’s singles tournament seven times, most recently in 2016.
Overall, Williams seems pretty stoked about her return. On Friday, she posted a photo of herself and her daughters, Olympia and Adira, sitting on Wimbledon’s iconic grass court. “@wimbledon looking a little different these days,” Williams captioned the photos of her and her kids smiling.
Those are game faces if I’ve ever seen them.
Stay in touch.
The latest in style, self, culture, and power in your inbox.
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice
Related