Whether or not tennis great Serena Williams is considering a comeback, the 23-time Grand Slam champion is now eligible to return as soon as Feb. 22.<\/p>\n
The International Tennis Integrity Agency included Williams, 44, on the updated list of reinstated players on Tuesday. That was the last step in a process that began at least as far back as Oct. 6 when her name appeared in the International Registered Testing Pool, a requirement for a return to competition.<\/p>\n
Being in the pool and available for random, out-of-competition drug testing for at least six months is a requirement for players who want to return to tennis. Players in the pool are required to inform testers of their location for one hour each day.<\/p>\n
“Omg yall I’m NOT coming back. This wildfire is crazy,” Williams posted on social media in December in response to a report of a possible comeback.<\/p>\n
As recently as last month, Williams was noncommittal either way.<\/p>\n
“I’m just having fun and enjoying my life right now,” she said on the “Today” show in January. “I’m just going to see what happens.”<\/p>\n
Williams last played on the WTA Tour at the U.S. Open in 2022. In August of that year, she announced in a Vogue magazine article that she was “evolving away” from tennis.<\/p>\n
“I have never liked the word retirement,” she wrote. “It doesn’t feel like a modern word to me. I’ve been thinking of this as a transition, but I want to be sensitive about how I use that word, which means something very specific and important to a community of people. Maybe the best word to describe what I’m up to is evolution.”<\/p>\n
If Williams does return, she could seek to enter the ATX Open in Austin, Texas, a WTA 250 tournament from Feb. 23 to March 1. Williams’ older sister, Venus, is still active on tour and received a wild-card entry for both singles and doubles. She had not announced a doubles partner.<\/p>\n
Ranked No. 1 for 319 weeks, Serena Williams won 73 singles titles on the WTA Tour and earned nearly $95 million in prize money. She won Wimbledon and the Australian Open seven times each, the U.S. Open six times and the French Open three times.<\/p>\n
Williams, who also won 14 major doubles titles with Venus, is the only player to accomplish a career Golden Slam (all four majors) in both singles and doubles.<\/p>\n
Williams and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, are raising two daughters.<\/p>\n
–Field Level Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whether or not tennis great Serena Williams is considering a comeback, the 23-time Grand Slam champion is now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[56343,6542,99,428,215247],"class_list":["post-461560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-grand-slam-champion","tag-serena-williams","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-the-international-tennis-integrity-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461560","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=461560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}