Venus Williams accepted a wild-card invitation to play singles at this month\u2019s DC Open, which would be the seven-time grand slam champion\u2019s first tournament in more than a year.<\/p>\n
Williams, who turned 45 in June, is listed as \u201cinactive\u201d on the WTA Tour\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
She hasn\u2019t competed in an official match since the Miami Open in 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something truly special about D.C.: the energy, the fans, the history,\u201d Williams said in a statement released Friday by organizers of the hard-court tournament, which begins with qualifying next weekend. \u201cThis city has always shown me so much love, and I can\u2019t wait to compete there again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams also played in the nation\u2019s capital in 2022.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has inspired people around the world with her accomplishments on the court and her visionary impact off the court,\u201d said Mark Ein, chairman of the Mubadala Citi DC Open. \u201cI know how much it means to our D.C. fans and community to be able to watch her compete in person this summer.\u201d<\/p>\n
In February, the tournament in Indian Wells, California, announced that Williams would be making her return to the tour by playing there, then later backtracked and said it turned out she wouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Williams\u2019 most recent grand slam appearances came in 2023, when she exited in the first round at Wimbledon \u2013 after slipping in the first set and hurting her right knee \u2013 and the US Open.<\/p>\n
Her five championships in singles at the All England Club came in 2000, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2008 and she won the 2000 and 2001 U.S. Open singles trophies, too. She also won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles alongside her younger sister, Serena, whose last tournament was the 2022 US Open, and a total of four Olympic gold medals.<\/p>\n
The older Williams said in 2011 that she had been diagnosed with Sj\u00f6gren\u2019s syndrome, an energy-sapping auto-immune disease that can cause joint pain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venus Williams accepted a wild-card invitation to play singles at this month\u2019s DC Open, which would be the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-2723","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}