Serena Williams has confirmed that she will make a stunning return to tennis at the age of 44, almost four years after her last competitive appearance.
The 23-time grand slam champion has received a doubles wildcard to play at the HSBC Championships at the Queen’s Club in west London, which starts on Monday 8 June, ahead of a likely return at Wimbledon later in the month. She is set to play doubles at Queen’s with Canadian teenager Victoria Mboko, who idolised Williams growing up, and may play singles at Wimbledon.
After months of frenzied speculation, Queen’s Club posted on Monday: “The Queen returns! Serena Williams is back and set for doubles at the HSBC Championships.” At the same time, Williams posted the message, “Good news travels fast”, along with a video of her on court in an all-white Nike tennis dress and with her phone buzzing rapidly in the background. “Guess everybody heard the news,” the video added.
In a press release from the tournament, Williams said: “Queen’s Club feels like the perfect place to begin this next chapter. Grass has given me some of the most meaningful moments of my career, and I’m excited to be back competing on one of the sport’s most iconic stages.”
Williams, one of the sport’s defining champions and greatest players of all time, has not played competitively since the 2022 US Open, where she reached the third round in a glittering farewell. Before that tournament, the American carefully said she would be “evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me”, rather than ever using the word “retirement”.
Williams, who gave birth to her second child in 2023, sparked speculation that she would be returning to tennis when she re-entered the International Tennis Integrity Agency’s anti-doping testing pool last August, and she has been cleared to compete competitively since 22 February.
A seven-time Wimbledon singles champion, as well as a six-time Wimbledon doubles champion with her sister Venus, the Championships are one of the most important tournaments in her hall-of-fame career. Her last appearance at Wimbledon came in a first-round defeat to Harmony Tan in 2022.
Laura Robson, the WTA tournament director at Queen’s Club, said: “Serena Williams is one of the greatest athletes the world has ever seen, and we’re delighted that she will be making her return to tennis at the LTA’s HSBC Championships.
“Women’s tennis made a historic return to The Queen’s Club last year, and now we have an icon of the game stepping back on to court at this prestigious venue – it’s very exciting for the tournament and the fans.”
Despite repeated denials from Williams, it has been an open secret for many months on tour that she was preparing to make a stunning return to tennis. Alycia Parks, the American player, revealed in February that she had practiced with Williams, adding: “She is in great shape, so I think she would kill it on tour.”
Videos of Williams on court emerged while she has become a prominent user of injectable weight-loss drugs. The 44-year-old is a spokesperson for the healthcare provider Ro, and said in a Super Bowl commercial that she was “healthier, stronger, moving better, and feeling better” as a result of losing 34lb (15.4kg) in a year using GLP-1s. Her husband, the Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, is an early investor in Ro.
A blockbuster return, but how competitive will Williams be?
Women’s tennis has evolved significantly in the four years since Serena Williams waved “goodbye” (or, “see you later”) at the US Open in 2022. While the end of the Williams era was initially followed by a spell of unpredictability, the top of the sport has largely been dominated by a new breed of champions in Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff and Elena Rybakina, with talents such as Amanda Anisimova, Mirra Andreeva and Victoria Mboko bidding to break through, too.
No one, however, comes close to matching the star power, gravitas and cut-through of Williams, a legend of the sport who transcended tennis along with her sister Venus across more than two decades at the top.
There is no question who the biggest attraction will be if Williams takes her place in the Wimbledon draw, even if she would be the oldest player to play singles since a 47-year-old Martina Navratilova in 2004. Her return to Centre Court, four years on, would be the biggest first-round match, by far.
But can she be competitive at the age of 44, after such a long period away? Williams would have been left disappointed by the nature of her first-round exit to the virtually unknown Harmony Tan at Wimbledon in 2022, but that was also her first singles match in a year due to injuries.
Returning now suggests she believes she is able to compete physically, a feeling she confirmed in her Ro commercial that aired during the Super Bowl when she said she was “healthier, stronger, moving better, and feeling better”.
Doubles is not as demanding on the body, so it may be a more realistic target. Her older sister Venus, after all, was able to reach the quarter-finals of the US Open doubles alongside Leylah Fernandez last September as wildcards; the selection of a younger player like the teenager Mboko for her Queen’s Club comeback suggests a similar plan. The US Open would also love Williams to be available for the second year of its new-look mixed doubles competition, which will see many of the top men’s singles players, such as Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner and even Novak Djokovic, take part.
But would Serena Williams really return to tennis at the age of 44, subjecting herself to daily anti-doping whereabouts checks, if she didn’t believe she would win a record-equalling 24th grand slam title? Even at this stage of her life, she will believe she can test the best players in the world if handed the opportunity to face one of the game’s new stars in Sabalenka or Gauff on Centre Court. Such a match-up would be blockbuster viewing, and with Williams bringing more eyes to the sport, it can only be good for tennis, too.
