For a player of Serena Williams\u2019s vintage, doubles is a much easier discipline to pursue than singles. For context, the apparently ageless Martina Navratilova was 49 when she won her final major \u2013 a mixed-doubles Wimbledon crown alongside fellow American Bob Bryan \u2013 in the summer of 2006. By contrast, Navratilova\u2019s last singles major came in 1990, when she was only 33.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Williams is understood to have such unshakeable self-belief that she fancies the idea of facing the best singles players in the world. In Melbourne in January, the chat around the commentary boxes was that some of her old peers, now working behind the microphone, had received text messages to the effect of \u201cLet me at \u2018em!\u201d. This doubles appearance seems to represent a toe in the water, as a step towards a possible singles return if all goes well.<\/p>\n
Brief as it might be, the grass-court season would give Williams the best opportunity to stage a singles coup. Not only does grass lend itself to shorter rallies than hard courts or clay \u2013 a bonus for someone of her age \u2013 but it also favours players with powerful serves: an area where Williams has always stood head and shoulders above her rivals.<\/p>\n
Williams has been secretive about her plans, refusing to confirm any rumours, and writing in a social media post last December: \u201cI\u2019m NOT coming back. This wildfire is crazy.\u201d However, she has shared footage of herself practising with quality hitting partners, including world No 79 Alycia Parks and former ATP player Jesse Levine.<\/p>\n
While tennis chat might be off the agenda, Williams has been contrastingly open about her recent weight loss, which she ascribes to the use of a GLP-1 drug \u2013 Zepbound \u2013 that works in a similar way to Ozempic or Mounjaro. The drug is marketed by Ro, an American healthcare provider where her husband, Alexis Ohanian, sits on the board. She says that Zepbound has helped her lose 31 pounds, and succeeded where any amount of running, biking and step-machine training had previously failed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a scene in my HBO documentary where you see my coach telling me, \u2018You have to lose weight\u2019,\u201d Williams told Vogue last year. \u201cBut it was so hard after I had [my first daughter] Olympia\u2026 My whole life is being in the gym, working out, running, training, HIIT training, dancing, every single thing you can think of. I would always get to a certain point on the scale, but I could never get below that. That\u2019s when I decided that it was time to try something different and got on the GLP-1 with Ro.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a player of Serena Williams\u2019s vintage, doubles is a much easier discipline to pursue than singles. For…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":990695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[10],"tags":[10095,93,79,1715,1068,34328,16,15,227594,92120,10101,5069],"class_list":["post-990694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-serena-williams","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-standard","tag-tennis","tag-top-story","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-us-content","tag-wimbledon-tennis","tag-womens-sport","tag-wta"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116653696481377534","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990694","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=990694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/990695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=990694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=990694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=990694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}