{"id":383313,"date":"2026-01-02T09:51:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T09:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/383313\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T09:51:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T09:51:08","slug":"australian-open-2026-venus-williams-45-receives-wildcard-for-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/383313\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian Open 2026: Venus Williams, 45, receives wildcard for tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Venus Williams is set to become the oldest female player to compete in the Australian Open main draw at the age of 45.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The seven-time Grand Slam champion has received the final women&#8217;s wildcard for the tournament, which begins on 18 January.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Williams last appeared at Melbourne Park in 2021 when she was beaten by Italy&#8217;s Sara Errani in the second round. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;m grateful for the opportunity to return to a place that has meant so much to my career,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The American, twice a runner-up in the first Grand Slam event of the year, will surpass the record of Japan&#8217;s Kimiko Date, who was 44 when she played at the event in 2015. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venus Williams is set to become the oldest female player to compete in the Australian Open main draw&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-383313","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\/383313","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=383313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}