Serena Williams has been tipped to make a shock comeback at the upcoming US Open by her former coach Rick Macci.
During a remarkable career, Williams won 23 women’s singles grand slams while adding 14 women’s doubles title and two mixed doubles crowns at slams. She spent 319 weeks as world No 1 and racked up 73 WTA Tour singles titles before playing her final match as a 40-year-old at the 2022 US Open – losing to Ajla Tomljanovic in the third round.
Her older sister Venus Williams is still competing, making headlines with her latest comeback last month where the 45-year-old competed at the Washington Open and became the second-oldest player in history, after Martina Navratilova, to win a WTA Tour singles match as she beat then-world No 35 Peyton Stearns 6-3 6-4 in her first match for more than 16 months.
The seven-time grand slam singles champion has since been given a wildcard for women’s singles event at the US Open, where she will compete for a record-extending 25th time when the tournament gets underway at Flushing Meadows on 24 August.
And legendary coach Macci is now convinced that the 43-year-old Serena Williams will join her sister by coming out of retirement to compete alongside Venus in the women’s doubles in New York.
Posting on X (formerly Twitter), the 70-year-old Macci wrote: “Asked if Serena will play doubles with Vee at the Open. My gut is probably [yes] because at the end of the day Serena can still play even though she has been away.
“Her serve is still one of the best on the planet and when she competes her mindset is like granite.”
Serena Williams is widely seen as the greatest women’s tennis player of all time (GOAT) although she does trail the controversial Margaret Court by one in terms of grand slam singles titles – 24 to 23.
She helped transform the sport and was almost unbeatable in a spell from 2014 to 2016 where, in a span of eight grand slams, she won five of them, lost in two finals and was knocked out at the semi-final stage of the other.
And Macci is adamant that no one even comes close to her in any debate about greatness.
In an interview with Tennis 365, he explained: “Serena’s the GOAT and the best player of all time, and I don’t think anybody is even in the passenger side when you talk about Serena.”
The Williams sisters won 14 women’s grand slam doubles titles together between 1999 and 2016 as they formed an unstoppable partnership. Macci coached them both in their younger years, from 1991 to 1995 at his tennis academy in Florida, and also weighed in on Venus Williams’s comeback.
“Both her and Serena, as you saw from the movie King Richard, are both like my daughters,” Macci added. “Especially Venus, because she was a little older and I spent more time with her.
“Listen, at the end of the day, she just loves to play. I saw the same smile and enthusiasm. She won that match [against Peyton Stearns in Washington], she’s bouncing up and down like a human pogo stick. The same exact thing I saw at age 14, it was identical.”
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