Serena Williams says her children motivated tennis comeback, does not rule out return to singles competition

Serena Williams announcing her comeback to tennis was received enthusiastically. Getting another opportunity to see one of the sport’s greatest players take the court again is exciting.

Yet Williams’ pending comeback in a doubles match at the HSBC Championships also prompted questions. Why would she do this? What does she have left to prove?

Speaking at the Queen’s Club in London before taking the court this week, the 23-time Grand Slam singles winner agreed that she has nothing to prove and nothing to lose by returning to the court. But there was one important personal reason for playing again.

“It’s really about my kids getting to see me play,” Williams said at a news conference on Sunday. “Olympia is a little bit older, Adira is very young. But it’s also having an opportunity to still be able to possibly do that, one last time, is kind of cool and exciting.”

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Williams’ older daughter Olympia will be nine years old in September, while Adira will turn three in August.

Asked if she could return to singles competition, Williams did not definitively say that wouldn’t happen.

“For singles, I can’t say yes, I can’t say no,” she said. “Right now, no. 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.”

Additionally, Williams has committed to play in the Berlin Open, which begins next week. As with the HSBC Championships, she will play doubles with partner Victoria Mboko, 19. Could Wimbledon be next after that? Doubles competition at the All England Lawn Tennis Clubbegins in early July, while singles play starts at the end of June.

Williams, 44, played her last professional tennis match at the 2022 U.S. Open, where she lost a grueling third-round contest to Ajla Tomljanovic in three sets, 7-5, 6-7(4), 6-1. However, she never said she was retiring, but referred to her distancing from the sport as “evolving away.”

Yet that evolution appeared to be moving back toward tennis when she re-entered the International Registered Testing Pool. The anti-doping test was required for returning to play, though she insisted at the time that a comeback was not imminent. Players have to be in the pool for six months before being eligible to play, which follows Williams’ timeline here.