Serena Williams will return from Wimbledon injury in doubles with sister Venus as road to U.S. Open begins

Venus and Serena Williams will play doubles at the Cincinnati Open in mid-August, in an appearance that could set the stage for Serena’s first match at the U.S. Open since the 2022 edition, which was the last tournament of the first part of her career.

The tournament announced Monday that the 23-time Grand Slam champion in singles would return to hard-court tennis by playing doubles at the WTA 1000 event in Mason, Oh., the second high-level hard-court tournament of the summer. Serena, 44, will team up with her 46-year-old sister, who recently accepted a wild-card entry into the singles draw at the Canadian Open.

Venus will also play singles at the Cincinnati Open, but Serena will not.

Venus has been playing fairly regularly, if unsuccessfully, throughout the spring and summer. She has not won a WTA Tour-level match since last July, when she beat Peyton Stearns at the D.C. Open. She played the same tournament this year, losing in singles in the first round to Austria’s Anastasia Potopova in straight sets, before suffering the same fate against Kamilla Rakhimova of Uzbekistan at the Canadian Open. It was her 14th consecutive loss in singles.

The sisters were supposed to team up and play doubles at Wimbledon in June. However, Serena tweaked her knee during a three-set loss to Maya Joint of Australia in the first round of the singles competition. She pulled out of doubles four days later.

Serena had played two doubles matches ahead of Wimbledon, first teaming up with defending Canadian Open singles champion Victoria Mboko at Queen’s in London. They won their first match at the prestigious grass-court tuneup for Wimbledon, but Mboko sustained a medial cruciate ligament injury in her following singles match which ruled the duo out of the doubles event. Mboko has not played since and will not defend her Canadian Open title, the biggest of her career to date.

Williams then teamed up with Karolína Muchová at the Berlin Tennis Open, another grass event, but they lost their opening match. Then came her injury at Wimbledon, which raised the possibility that she would not be able to play in any events during the North American hard-court swing.

The Cincinnati Open is the last major tuneup before the U.S. Open, the site of Williams’ final match before her initial “evolving away” from tennis, in which she lost to Australia’s Ajla Tomljanović in three sets.

The Williams sisters have until Aug. 17 to decide whether they want to find partners with whom they can throw their names in the hat for a wild card into the mixed doubles competition at the U.S. Open. That 16-team tournament begins Aug. 24 with a day of qualifying matches. Six teams will qualify with their singles rankings. Eight will receive wild cards, and two more will gain entry through an eight-team qualifying competition.

Serena and Venus will play their opening match a few days into the Cincinnati Open, which starts Aug. 13. Sloane Stephens, Taylor Townsend, Darja Vidmanova, Elvina Kalieva, Caroline Dolehide and Loïs Boisson have also received singles wild cards.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Sports Business, Culture, Tennis, Women’s Tennis

2026 The Athletic Media Company