Tennis icon Serena Williams is making a highly anticipated return to the court at the HSBC Championships in London, entering the women’s doubles with 19-year-old Canadian Victoria Mboko.
The 44-year-old, a 23-time grand slam singles champion, has been granted a wild card for the Queen’s Club event, marking her first competitive appearance since her emotional farewell at the 2022 US Open.
Williams stated her decision to pick up a racket again was simply a case of “Why not?”, and despite Mboko’s observation that her partner is “hitting great”, the American insists she is not focused on any outcomes.
“I don’t need to win,” said the tennis legend. “I’ve won more than most people have in their whole lives, so it’s not that important to me, and it’s important that I keep reminding myself of that, because I don’t have anything to prove.
“I don’t have anything to lose, and everything here is just to gain.”
Williams never directly used the word retirement, but Monday’s comeback confirmation still came as a shock after the mother-of-two had, to use her preferred terminology at the time, made the decision to “evolve away” from tennis.
Speaking after she and Mboko trained on the Queen’s Club grass, Williams said: “This whole journey is like, I’m putting no pressure on myself.
“For me right now, it’s really just about so many elements. It’s really about my kids getting to see me play. Olympia is a little bit older, Adira is very young.
“An athlete is the best thing that you can be in the highest place, and having an opportunity to still be able to do that, possibly one last time, is kind of cool and exciting.”
The seven-time Wimbledon singles champion, who spent 319 weeks as the WTA number one at the peak of her career, and claimed 39 major titles, has not exactly ruled out a return to singles, but suggested it was not imminent.
“I can’t say no right now,” she said. “I feel like I probably need to train a little bit more if I want to play singles, and we will see if I get there, and if not… that’s not my journey right now.”
Williams, who shares her two daughters with Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, revealed as recently as December that she believed she “definitely was not” returning to tennis, but, after some conversations, thought: “Well, why not? For lack of a better explanation.
“It’s summer, the kids aren’t in school, so it’s a perfect time to get out there, have fun, and see what happens.”
In Mboko, Williams saw something, she said, “that reminded me a lot of myself” in her attitude, resilience, and drive. After making the “pretty 11th-hour commitment” to Queen’s, she reached out to the Canadian via text message.
Mboko said: “She’s hitting great. She has such clean ball striking, she could probably take years off, and when she steps on the court she could probably find that rhythm again and find her timing. So I think that’s really a god-given gift that she has.
“I personally think she’s ready to go. I’m hitting with her, she’s hitting pretty big and she’s really fit, so we’ll see.”
