United States tennis legend Venus Williams returns to the Australian Open for the first time since 2021.<\/p>\n
Published On 2 Jan 20262 Jan 2026<\/p>\n
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Seven-time major singles champion Venus Williams has been handed a wildcard to the Australian Open aged 45, becoming the oldest woman to play at the season-opening tennis Grand Slam.<\/p>\n
The American, who has played only a limited number of singles matches in recent years, will compete in the main draw at Melbourne Park for the first time since 2021.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m excited to be back in Australia and looking forward to competing during the Australian summer,\u201d Williams said on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had so many incredible memories there and I\u2019m grateful for the opportunity to return to a place that has meant so much to my career.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams is a five-time Wimbledon champion and also won two US Opens.<\/p>\n
She was an Australian Open singles finalist in 2003 and 2017.<\/p>\n
She will become the oldest woman to play at the Australian Open since Japan\u2019s Kimiko Date, who was 44 when she lost in the first round in 2015.<\/p>\n
Williams, a four-time Australian Open doubles champion, is set to begin her preparations for the January 18-February 1 tournament at the Auckland Classic next week, having returned to the circuit at the US Open last year after a 16-month break.<\/p>\n
She will then head to the Hobart International immediately before Melbourne.<\/p>\n
Two-time Grand Slam champion and fellow American Coco Gauff said it was \u201cincredible\u201d to see Williams still turning up for tournaments.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s a legend of the sport, so it will be cool to see her back in action,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s incredible the longevity of her career. She\u2019s one of the people I looked up to, so looking forward to seeing her back on court.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"United States tennis legend Venus Williams returns to the Australian Open for the first time since 2021. Published…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[12,93,79,1068,16,15,49,286],"class_list":{"0":"post-669200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-sport","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-us-canada"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115826141789969466","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669200","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=669200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}