{"id":382715,"date":"2026-01-02T02:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T02:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/382715\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T02:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T02:01:07","slug":"venus-williams-receives-australian-open-wild-card-for-first-appearance-since-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/382715\/","title":{"rendered":"Venus Williams receives Australian Open wild card for first appearance since 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"

Venus Williams<\/a> is set to play her first Grand Slam tennis match outside of New York since 2023, after receiving a wild card into the Australian Open. The seven-time Grand Slam champion, who played three U.S. hard-court tournaments last year, including the U.S. Open, will make her first appearance in Melbourne since 2021.<\/p>\n

Williams, 45, won her first-round match that year before losing 6-1, 6-0 to Sara Errani of Italy in the second. She has twice reached the final at the Australian Open, in 2003 and 2017, losing to her sister<\/a>, Serena, twice. This year, Venus will warm up by playing the Auckland Open, a WTA 250 event for which she has also received a wild card.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams was not expected to play in 2025 after competing in just two matches in 2024 and not featuring at any of the four majors. Yet,\u00a0Williams made a surprise return to the court<\/a> in July, with a wild card into the D.C. Open in Washington, D.C., after receiving and then declining a wild card<\/a> into the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, Calif., in March.<\/p>\n

She sensationally won her opening-round match against compatriot Peyton Stearns, despite not having a world ranking. And during a news conference at the following event, the Cincinnati Open<\/a>, she told the tennis world not to \u201crule her out\u201d for 2026.<\/p>\n

Williams then received another wild card at the U.S. Open. She lost to No. 13 seed Karolina Muchov\u00e1 in the first round of singles, but made a memorable run to the women\u2019s doubles quarterfinals with Leylah Fernandez of Canada<\/a>. Her last Grand Slam match outside the U.S. was at Wimbledon in 2023.<\/p>\n

Williams\u2019 sister, 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena, has also allowed herself to return to tennis by reentering the sport\u2019s anti-doping testing pool<\/a>, but that could not happen until April. The 44-year-old in December denied any comeback, but reentry into the pool entails providing whereabouts for every day of the year and the possibility of random testing.<\/p>\n

Venus is the second American woman to receive a wild card into the first Grand Slam of 2026, which begins Jan. 18. Elizabeth Mandlik, 24, won the U.S. Tennis Association\u2019s wild-card challenge for the tournament, which rewards the best-performing player in a five-week window late in the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venus Williams is set to play her first Grand Slam tennis match outside of New York since 2023,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-382715","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\/382715","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=382715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}