{"id":257178,"date":"2025-07-11T21:14:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T21:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/257178\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T21:14:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T21:14:09","slug":"venus-williams-former-world-number-one-accepts-wildcard-after-16-month-absence-from-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/257178\/","title":{"rendered":"Venus Williams: Former world number one accepts wildcard after 16 month-absence from Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Seven-time Grand Slam champion Venus Williams has accepted a wildcard for the Washington Open in what would be her first competitive match in 16 months.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 45-year-old has not competed since the Miami Open in March 2024 &#8211; and last won a match at the Cincinnati Open in August 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The former world number one is currently listed as &#8216;inactive&#8217; on the WTA website, meaning she does not have a ranking.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There&#8217;s something truly special about DC &#8211; the energy, the fans, the history,&#8221; said Williams in a statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;This city has always shown me so much love and I can&#8217;t wait to compete there again.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seven-time Grand Slam champion Venus Williams has accepted a wildcard for the Washington Open in what would be&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-257178","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114836672923308613","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}