Serena Williams comeback? Tennis great takes a step toward return.
The greatest women’s tennis player of all time has taken the first step toward a potential comeback.
Serena Williams has reentered the International Tennis Integrity Agency’s registered testing pool, a mandatory step in a return to competition. Williams’s inclusion on the list was first reported in the tennis newsletter Bounces.
The 23-time Grand Slam champion has made no public announcement about a plan to return to play, but her name appears on a list of players dated Oct. 6. According to the ITIA, retired athletes must make themselves available for out-of-competition testing - providing details on their daily whereabouts and times they could give samples - for at least six months before a sanctioned event, meaning Williams could be eligible to compete in April.
The 44-year-old first appeared on the ITIA’s retired players list in September 2022, shortly after a third-round loss in the 2022 U.S. Open.
Ahead of that tournament, Williams announced in Vogue she was “evolving” away from tennis but avoided using the word “retirement” during her lavish farewell tour in New York - which included a second-round win over the then-No. 2 player in the world.
Should she decide to compete again, Williams would be following in the footsteps of her older sister, just as it was at the start of her career.
Venus Williams returned to the WTA Tour to much fanfare in July after a 16-month absence. She played singles in two tournaments in the run-up to the U.S. Open, winning a match in Washington that made her the second-oldest woman to win a tour-level singles match after Martina Navratilova’s victory at 47 in 2004. Though Venus lost in the first round of the singles competition at the year’s final Grand Slam, she and Canadian Leylah Fernandez partnered to reach the doubles quarterfinals in New York.
Venus was asked at the D.C. Open about the possibility of her sister rejoining her on tour. Serena had posted a picture of her hitting – and hitting well – shortly before Venus made her comeback.
“I don’t ask those questions. I don’t ask her that. I’m her biggest fan. I never wanted her to retire,” Venus said. “ … She can take six months off, and she clocks it clean. You can’t teach that kind of talent. She’s just so good.”
Venus, a seven-time Grand Slam singles champion who never officially retired and has accepted a wild card to play a tournament in New Zealand in January, said her comeback was about fulfilling a desire to play while healthy again after suffering through years of pain caused by uterine fibroids. She had surgery to address the growths during her 16-month hiatus.
A potential comeback from Serena might be subject to a different kind of spotlight. To be sure, Williams needs no validation nor legacy-boosting. She is duly celebrated for revolutionizing women’s tennis with her powerful serve and competitive ferocity; she and Venus helped usher in an era of American tennis in which Black players dominate the top rankings.
Williams won her most recent WTA title – and the only title she won after returning from giving birth to her daughter, Olympia – in Auckland in 2020. But she was striving for history when she “evolved” away from the sport she transformed – a 24th Grand Slam title that would equal Margaret Court’s record that has stood since 1973.