Serena Williams’ tennis comeback: Her first tournament and what comes next
Editor’s note: This explainer has been updated June 1, 2026, to reflect news of Serena Williams’ return to professional tennis.Serena Williams, considered by many the greatest women’s tennis player of all time, will return to tennis with a women’s doubles wild card into Queen’s, the prestigious grass-court tournament played ahead of Wimbledon.Williams, 44, will compete on the WTA Tour for the first time in nearly four years.The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) listed Williams, 44, on its roster of reinstated tennis players, with an eligibility date of Feb. 22, 2026, last year.The 23-time Grand Slam singles champion initially denied a return to the sport, after appearing in a tennis anti-doping pool, but has since softened her position, refusing to rule out a tennis comeback during an interview with “Today” in January.But which tournaments could Williams play in? Would she partner with her sister Venus, the seven-time Grand Slam singles champion with whom she won 14 major doubles titles and three Olympic golds, who has also recently returned? And what has she had to do to make a tennis return possible?Where is Serena Williams making her tennis comeback?Williams’ first tournament back will be the women’s doubles at Queen’s in southwest London, which begins June 8. Williams is set to play with Victoria Mboko, the 19-year-old Canadian.Whether or not Williams will use that tournament as a launchpad to play Wimbledon, the third Grand Slam of the year and one that she has won seven times, remains to be seen.“Queen’s Club feels like the perfect place to begin this next chapter,” Williams said in a statement.“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.”The announcement ends a gradual shift in Williams from a definitive “no,” to non-committal, to returning to the sport.When Williams’ name was seen in the tennis anti-doping pool last December, Williams posted on X: “Omg yall I’m NOT coming back. This wildfire is crazy.”But during an interview on “Today” in January, Williams was offered the chance to put the possibility of her return to bed. Instead, she laughed and responded: “If I want to put it to bed … Listen, I want to go to bed — it’s early.”On both occasions, representatives for Williams did not respond to a request for comment. Then, Feb. 19, Williams posted a cryptic TikTok in which she practiced serves alone on a tennis court for, she said, the first time since 2023.By reentering the testing pool, and in so doing subjecting herself to tennis’ whereabouts rules, which include accepting the possibility of random drug testing, and remaining in a certain place for an hour a day, Williams gave a huge indication that she is, at the very least, keeping the option open of a comeback. Actively teasing practice videos only deepens that possibility.She has practiced with Alycia Parks, a fellow American player, and was looking to return as early as last year’s U.S. Open, according to a report in Bounces. At that time, she had not completed the six months in the anti-doping testing pool required by the ITIA for returning players.Various players told The Athletic last year of the (necessary) strain that tennis’ anti-doping rules puts on them, so it would be an extremely strange move to subject oneself to them unnecessarily.The strong suspicion is that Williams’ denials and deflections are more because she wants to make any comeback announcement on her own terms. In August 2022, Williams gave a news conference after beating Nuria Párrizas Díaz in the Canadian Open, in which she gave no indication that she was about to announce her retirement. The following day, Williams did exactly that in a first-person piece for “Vogue.”How will she enter tournaments?With wild cards. There is no protected ranking for players who have left the sport, and so Williams’ participation, at least until she builds up her ranking, will be at the discretion of the tournaments she wishes to enter.Given her status in the game, she is likely to have absolutely no issue getting a wild card wherever she wants. And smaller tournaments will likely be queuing up to offer her hefty appearance fees to play at their events.How is she preparing for a possible comeback?Williams still plays tennis regularly at her home in Florida, and world No. 77 Parks told Tennis Majors on Saturday that she had recently practiced with her. Parks added: “She is in great shape. So I think she would kill it on tour.”Williams has also spoken about the benefit of taking GLP-1 weight-loss drugs since she retired from tennis — more on those later.When you love something come rain or shine you find a way to enjoy and keep doing it 🥰🥰 pic.twitter.com/ZiNvggzhnW— Serena Williams (@serenawilliams) December 28, 2024Will she play singles or doubles, and who with?It had been unclear whether Williams would go straight into singles, or look to smooth the transition by playing doubles first. She has alighted on the latter route at Queen’s, before confirming whether or not she might receive a wild card of any kind into Wimbledon.There is some precedent for the latter, with Williams opting to just play the doubles at the Eastbourne Open in England in June 2022 as she returned to the sport after a year out with injury, before returning to singles action at Wimbledon a week later.On that occasion in Eastbourne, Williams teamed up with Ons Jabeur.What do retired tennis players have to do to return to tennis?The main obstacle was reentering the anti-doping pool for six months, which Williams completed Feb. 22. She will then need to remain in the pool, and give her daily whereabouts to the ITIA.Then it’s a case of trying to clamber up the rankings ladder again — although that’s less relevant for Williams, who will be given wildcards whenever she wants them.Why did she reenter the tennis anti-doping pool?Either to return to tennis, to keep the option open of returning to tennis, or because she enjoys updating her daily whereabouts and the prospect of a drugs tester ringing on her doorbell at 6 a.m. asking for a urine sample.Why would she want to come back to tennis?Largely because she can, and at 44 surely won’t be able to for much longer. Williams still hits regularly, and will have seen how competitive Venus, now 45, has been on her return to the sport over the last seven months. Why not see if she can be even more so? Especially when her Grand Slam tally of 23 remains one behind Novak Djokovic and Margaret Court’s record, and when she is of the view that she can compete against today’s top players on the women’s tour.Williams always left the door open for a return — speaking of “evolving away” from tennis rather than retiring when announcing her farewell in 2022 — and with her children a little older, at 8 and 3, she may see this as the right moment and last opportunity. Williams has proven herself the master of the comeback before — returning to the sport after serious injury to win Slams previously, and reaching four major finals after giving birth in September 2017.Williams has also spoken about the benefits of taking GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, and in a series of interviews last summer said that she felt joint stress caused by her weight had prevented her from winning as many Grand Slam titles as she might have done.Then, a year after her cameo in Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show at Super Bowl LIX, during Super Bowl LX, Williams appeared in a commercial for telehealth company Ro, advertising the effectiveness of the weight-loss drugs. In the advert, Williams delivered a voiceover saying she is “moving better” and “feeling better” thanks to the drugs provided by the company, at one point directly injecting a syringe into her arm. Her husband, Alexis Ohanian, is an investor in Ro and serves on its board.Are tennis players allowed to take GLP-1 drugs?GLP-1s were not included on the World Anti Doping Agency’s (WADA) 2026 list of prohibited substances. They are part of WADA’s “monitoring program,” however, meaning the situation could change as more information about the drugs and their effects comes to light.When was her last match and why did she retire?You mean, “evolve away.” Williams did so, she said at the time, because she wanted to move “toward other things that are important to me. A few years ago I quietly started Serena Ventures, a venture capital firm. Soon after that, I started a family. I want to grow that family.” Williams has just done that, giving birth to a second child, Adira River, in August 2023.Williams played her final match in September 2022 — a third-round defeat to Ajla Tomljanović at the U.S. Open, having beaten Danka Kovinić and then the No. 2 seed Anett Kontaveit in the first couple of rounds.It brought to an end a glittering career that took in 23 singles Grand Slams (the most of any woman in tennis’ professional Open Era), plus 14 in doubles and two in mixed. Overall, Williams won 73 singles titles and picked up just under $95 million dollars in a career that made her one of the biggest icons in the history of professional sport.Have other major champions made similar comebacks?Court, Evonne Goolagong Cawley and Kim Clijsters have won titles after childbirth, while Venus has done well since returning to tennis after 16 months out last July. But she’s only actually won one match, and so there’s no real precedent for a player in their mid-40s coming back to the tour and making a big impact.Martina Navratilova returned to singles in 2002, aged 45, eight years after retiring, and won a match at the Britannic Asset Management International Championships in Eastbourne, England. A couple of years later, she made more of a concerted comeback, but never won more than one match at the five tournaments she entered (plus another in 2005). She reached the latter stages of numerous doubles Grand Slams during this period, and won three mixed-doubles majors — including the U.S. Open in 2006 with Bob Bryan, aged 49.Should she return, Williams has the opportunity to make yet more history.This article originally appeared in The Athletic.Sports Business, Culture, Tennis, Women's Tennis2026 The Athletic Media Company
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