Serena Williams Confirms Tennis Comeback With Doubles Wildcard

Serena Williams isn’t done with tennis after all.

The 23-time Grand Slam champion entered the HSBC Championships as a doubles wildcard, the tournament confirmed on Monday. The tournament, played on grass at the Queen’s Club in London and begins June 6, is a WTA 500-level competition that serves as a warm-up for Wimbledon.

In a nod to the long-held rumors that she would be returning to play, Williams posted a video on her X account Monday “good news travels fast” as she walks onto a tennis court to the sound of phone dings. “I gotta change my number,” she says as her phone blows up.

“Serena is not just a great champion. She’s a successful entrepreneur, a powerful advocate for the issues that matter – and one of the most iconic women in the world,”  WTA Chair Valerie Camillo said in a Monday release. “We are thrilled to welcome her back to the WTA Tour at this hugely exciting moment for women’s tennis.”

Williams, 44, last played in 2022 when she retired after a third-round loss to Ajla Tomljanović at the US Open. It was just a few weeks after she announced she was “evolving away from tennis.” However, murmurs of a possible return got louder in recent months, after she re-entered into the International Tennis Integrity Association’s drug testing pool last December.

Then, Williams denied reports of a comeback, saying “Omg yall I’m NOT coming back. This wildfire is crazy.” In January, on the Today show, she said her return “not a yes or no” and that she’d “see what happens,” before dodging further questions on the matter.

Rumors of Williams’s comeback at the Queen’s Club first surfaced on May 28, when U.S. Open champion Andy Roddick said on his Served podcast that she’d play doubles with Canadian WTA world No. 9 Victoria Mboko next month.

“Me and Serena have stayed in touch. Which is really, really nice because I really look up to her. The fact that she even knows me is very exciting,” Mboko said at a French Open press conference, when asked about Williams. “I think for me, I wanna kinda leave the moment for her. I feel like if she’s ready to come back on her own terms, then I feel like it’s up to her to announce that. Other than that, I don’t have much to say.”

The HSBC Championships did not confirm Williams’s entry when Front Office Sports asked about it on May 28. The tournament’s women’s doubles portion runs from June 8 to 14, with the start happening just two days after the French Open women’s singles final. It will be streamed in the U.S. on the Tennis Channel.

It’s not confirmed whether Williams will compete at Wimbledon, which starts in late June.

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