Venus Williams accepts Indian Wells tennis wild card one year after having to decline

The BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells did not make the same mistake twice. For the second consecutive year, it has given seven-time Grand Slam singles champion Venus Williams a wild card — and this time, she’s co-signing it.

“I’m so excited to be heading back to Indian Wells and can’t wait to return home to play in California,” Williams, 45, said in a release issued by the tournament Friday. “This tournament is always such a special experience, and there’s nothing like competing in front of these incredible fans.

Indian Wells, the prestigious tournament held just outside Palm Springs, Calif., awarded Williams a wild card this time last year, when she had not played a WTA Tour match in nearly a year. But a few days later, Williams said she would not be playing due to prior commitments.

This time, she is, as she bids to win a singles match for the first time since last July, when she beat Peyton Stearns at the D.C. Open in her first match since March 2024. Williams will also play doubles at the event, partnering 23-year-old Canadian Leylah Fernandez, the tournament said on social media. The duo reached the U.S. Open quarterfinals last summer, after only joining up during the first week of the tournament.

Williams has now received wild cards into six tournaments since the D.C. Open, including two majors. She and her sister, Serena, boycotted Indian Wells for 14 years after the 2001 tournament, when sections of the crowd booed them first when Venus pulled out of a semifinal against Serena, and then again when Venus and her father, Richard, attended Serena’s final against Kim Clijsters.

“I looked up, and all I could see was a sea of rich people — mostly older, mostly white — standing and booing lustily, like some kind of genteel lynch mob,” Serena wrote in her 2009 autobiography, “On the Line”.

“I don’t mean to use such inflammatory language to describe the scene, but that’s really how it seemed from where I was down on the court. Like these people were gonna come looking for me after the match.”

After years of space, and then discussions, Serena returned in 2015; Venus in 2016.

Serena, 44, has also been hinting at a tennis comeback in recent months, after denying any return to the sport last year when her name appeared in its anti-doping pool. She will be eligible to play from Feb. 22, but has yet to make any announcement of a formal comeback.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Tennis, Women’s Tennis

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