Serena Williams will make her return to Grand Slam tennis at Wimbledon this month after being given a wildcard entry to the singles.
The 40-year-old American, who is a 23-time Grand Slam singles champion, has not played since injuring herself in the first round at SW19 last year.
She will make her return to tennis playing doubles at Eastbourne alongside Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur in the week before Wimbledon then compete at the All England Club, where she is a seven-time singles champion.
Williams’ elder sister Venus, who has won the singles at Wimbledon five times and the doubles six times alongside Serena, was not in the initial batch of singles wildcards announced on Tuesday.
However, the 41-year-old, who has not played on the WTA Tour since August, could still be given one of the remaining two spots for the tournament, which begins on 27 June.
Serena – who earlier on Tuesday had posted an image of her trainers on grass, captioning it: “SW and SW19. It’s a date” – is currently ranked 1,208 because of her prolonged inactivity.
She won the last of her Wimbledon titles in 2016, but reached the final in 2018 and 2019 after returning from maternity leave. She last won a Grand Slam singles title at the 2017 Australian Open.
The younger Williams first played in the singles event at Wimbledon as a 16-year-old in 1998 and has only missed the tournament three times since, including when pregnant with daughter Olympia in 2017.
Credit: bbc.com
