Serena Williams leaves door open for playing singles at Wimbledon

Serena Williams has resumed her all-time great tennis career after nearly four years away, but she has only dipped her toe back into doubles draws so far.

Williams’ first match since the 2022 US Open came alongside Victoria Mboko at the HSBC Championships at the Queen’s Club in London on June 9, and she reminded everyone why she’s a legend in a straight-set win. Unfortunately, Mboko suffered a knee injury the following day, so their HSBC Championships run ended abruptly.

Williams, 44, then paired with Karolina Muchova to play doubles in the Berlin Tennis Open. They lost their opening match Tuesday, but this week also brought the euphoric news that Williams and Venus Williams, her all-time great sister, received a wild card to compete in doubles together at Wimbledon. They last played together at the 2022 US Open.

While tennis fans should be grateful to watch Williams play tennis again in any form, Williams can’t escape questions about whether she plans to extend her triumphant comeback into singles. That question tends to follow you when you’re a 23-time Grand Slam singles champion, I suppose.

After losing at Berlin, Williams met with the press. One reporter informed her that “there’s still one Wimbledon singles wild card that hasn’t been announced yet” and asked her whether she’d be interested.

“Oh my gosh, there’s some left? I better get to practice,” Williams said, adding, “Would you be interested that I took it?”

The reporter confirmed he’d be very interested, to which Williams said, “Gosh, you think I’m ready for singles?”

They went back and forth a few more times, the journalist trying mightily to get a definitive answer out of Williams, but she would not give it to him. She ultimately said, “That’s the question of the hour, right? I don’t know. I don’t know. I wonder why there’s — I don’t know.”

Williams’ nonresponse is particularly interesting because she was previously pretty adamant about not being ready for singles when meeting with press at the HSBC Championships less than two weeks ago.

“I can’t say yeah, I can’t say no. Right now, no,” she said. “I feel like I probably need to train a little bit more if I want to play singles. We’ll see if I get there, and if not, that’s not my journey right now.”

Williams has seven Wimbledon singles titles to her name, while she and Venus, 46, have won six Wimbledon doubles titles together. (They’ve won 14 doubles titles overall.) We have her eight-year-old daughter, Olympia, to thank for Serena reuniting with Venus on the court.

“I think it’s gonna be fun,” Williams said in Berlin. “My daughter, Olympia, told me that I should play with Venus at Wimbledon. She’s always right, so I was like, ‘OK.’”

So we should cross our fingers that Olympia encourages her mom to give singles another go.