Williams had served for the first set before losing four games in a row and was 4-0 up in the second before she weathered a Tomljanovic fightback to take it on a tie-break.<\/p>\n
But Tomljanovic remained composed in a partisan atmosphere and took advantage of a fading Williams to race away with the third set.<\/p>\n
Speaking after the match, Tomljanovic told the crowd: “I’m feeling really sorry because I love Serena just as much as you guys do. <\/p>\n
“What she’s done for me, for tennis, is incredible. She is the greatest of all time.”<\/p>\n
Asked afterwards if she would consider a comeback, Williams said: “I don’t think so, but you never know.”<\/p>\n
And she has been true to her word. She will return on the grass courts of West Kensington when she plays doubles alongside 19-year-old Canadian star Victoria Mboko at Queen’s.<\/p>\n
Williams’ elder sister Venus still plays on the WTA Tour and reached the quarter-finals of the 2025 US Open women’s doubles, aged 45.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think Serena will come back and be satisfied with making the second week,” Tomljanovic said before the American’s return was confirmed.<\/p>\n
“Even her last US Open, I think in her mind she was going to win it, so she must be feeling some sort of extra boost of energy.<\/p>\n
“Maybe she’s inspired by Venus.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Williams had served for the first set before losing four games in a row and was 4-0 up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-693388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693388","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=693388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}