{"id":10475,"date":"2026-06-01T16:07:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T16:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/10475\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T16:07:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T16:07:20","slug":"tennis-legend-serena-williams-to-compete-for-first-time-in-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/10475\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennis legend Serena Williams to compete for first time in years"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Serena Williams<\/a> is returning to competitive tennis after all.<\/p>\n

Months after insisting on social media, \u201cOmg yall I\u2019m NOT coming back<\/a>,\u201d the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion announced on Monday that she\u2019ll play professionally for the first time in almost four years at the HSBC Championships at the Queen\u2019s Club in London.<\/p>\n

Williams has been given a wild card entry into the doubles draw of the WTA 500 event, which begins June 8.<\/p>\n

\u201cQueen\u2019s Club feels like the perfect place to begin this next chapter,\u201d Williams said in a statement<\/a> released by the tournament. \u201cGrass has given me some of the most meaningful moments of my career, and I\u2019m excited to be back competing on one of the sport\u2019s most iconic stages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams, 44, teased the announcement earlier Monday by posting a video<\/a> on social media that featured her phone\u2018s notifications going off constantly while she was seemingly practicing on the court. <\/p>\n

\u201cGood news travels fast,\u201d Williams wrote on the post.<\/p>\n

Multiple media outlets are reporting that Williams\u2019 playing partner will be Canadian teenager Victoria Mboko, who is ranked No. 9 in WTA singles. Williams has won 14 Grand Slam titles and three Olympic gold medals in doubles with her sister, Venus Williams<\/a>, as her partner.<\/p>\n

It is not clear if Williams will participate in any other tennis events. Wimbledon, a Grand Slam event Williams won seven times in singles, begins June 29 in London. <\/p>\n

Williams\u2019 last professional match was a loss to Australian Ajla Tomljanovic<\/a> in the third round of the U.S. Open on Sept. 2, 2002. She registered as retired with the International Tennis Integrity Agency the next day.<\/p>\n

Last December, however, Williams re-entered the agency\u2019s drug-testing pool. According to the ITIA website, retired players \u201cmay not return to sanctioned events unless they have made themselves available for out-of-competition testing for at least six months prior to the event in question.\u201d <\/p>\n

The move led to much speculation about a possible Williams return, leading to her social media post denying any such intentions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Serena Williams is returning to competitive tennis after all. Months after insisting on social media, \u201cOmg yall I\u2019m…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3222,4622,2394,3753,4626,4629,2339,4628,4627,4625,4621,28,4623,4620,4624,2820],"class_list":["post-10475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-club","tag-double-draw","tag-event","tag-first-time","tag-june","tag-last-professional-match","tag-london","tag-monday","tag-playing-partner","tag-queen","tag-social-medium","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-legend-serena-williams","tag-williams","tag-wta-single","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}