Key Points
- Serena Williams, 44, announced June 1 she is returning to professional tennis after nearly four years
- She accepted a wild card to play doubles at the HSBC Championships at Queen's Club, a Wimbledon grass warmup
- She is expected to partner rising Canadian Victoria Mboko, with a Wimbledon appearance likely to follow
- Williams last played at the 2022 US Open and re-entered the anti-doping testing pool last fall
Six months after posting "Omg yall I'm NOT coming back," Serena Williams is coming back.
The return
Williams announced on June 1 that she has accepted a wild-card invitation to play doubles at the HSBC Championships at Queen's Club in London, a top grass-court warmup the week before Wimbledon. She is expected to partner rising Canadian star Victoria Mboko, and a Wimbledon appearance is seen as likely to follow. "Queen's Club feels like the perfect place to begin this next chapter," Williams said. "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 four-year road back
Williams had not played a professional match since a third-round loss to Ajla Tomljanovic at the 2022 US Open, an exit she framed as "evolving away" from the sport rather than a retirement. Speculation built last fall when she re-entered the International Tennis Integrity Agency's drug-testing pool — a requirement to compete again — only for Williams to wave it off in December with an "Omg yall I'm NOT coming back" post on X. She returns at 44 as the most decorated player of the Open era: 23 Grand Slam singles titles and 73 WTA singles titles.
The business of a comeback
Williams never stopped being a commercial force in tennis even while away from the court — a career that has cleared roughly $500 million across prize money and endorsements, an eight-figure annual sponsor roster, a venture fund in Serena Ventures, and a fresh wave of Ro ads that ran through a 2026 Super Bowl spot. She has also moved into ownership, taking a stake in the WNBA's Toronto Tempo. A doubles wild card at Queen's is a low-stakes on-ramp that prints attention — for the tournament, for Wimbledon, and for Serena's brand. Whether she is chasing a 24th major or a grass-court victory lap, the comeback is a cultural event before it is a competitive one.
Sources: ESPN, Sky Sports
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