Tennis great Serena Williams has hinted at a comeback 18 months after “stepping away from tennis”, saying on social media that she was “ready to hit balls again”.
Williams, 42, said she was “walking away from tennis” in an essay to Vogue magazine in 2022 and, although she has not confirmed the US Open as her farewell event, she received lavish tributes before every match in New York and gave an emotional goodbye after losing in the third round to Ajla Tomljanovic.
“I’m not retired,” Williams said at a conference in San Francisco while promoting her investment company, Serena Ventures in October 2022. “The chances (of a return) are very high. You can come to my house, I have a court.”
The 23-time Grand Slam champion, who took the tennis world by storm as a teenager and is considered by many to be the greatest of all time, revealed at the time that she wasn’t preparing for a tournament after the US Open, which did not seem natural to him. .
“I haven’t really thought about (retirement) yet,” she said. “But I woke up the other day and went out on the field and thought for the first time in my life that I wasn’t playing for a competition, and it was really weird.
“It was like the first day of the rest of my life and I’m enjoying it, but I’m still trying to find that balance.”
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Serena Williams met Jannik Sinner at the Miami Open and shared what she loves about her game
Williams was careful not to say the R-word, instead announcing that she was “evolving” away from tennis.
“I have never liked the word retirement. It does not seem to me to be a modern word,” Williams wrote in Vogue in August.
“I thought of this as a transition, but I want to be sensitive to how I use this word, which means something very specific and important to a community of people.
“Perhaps the best word to describe what I’m doing is evolution. I’m here to tell you that I’m evolving from tennis to other things that are important to me.”
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Billie Jean King, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Andy Murray and Todd Martin discuss Serena Williams’ legacy on and off the court
Is Serena’s return too late?
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A look back at the most memorable moments of Venus and Serena Williams’ US Open careers
Raz Mirza of Sky Sports
Women’s tennis, like Serena, has evolved in the 18 months since she left the scene with Iga Swiatek, Aryna Sabalenka, Coco Gauff and Elena Rybakina, creating a new “Big Four” and propelling women’s tennis to new heights. summits.
If Serena were to make a comeback, she would ideally need to be 100% fit and ready to compete with the best.
Her last Grand Slam singles title came in 2017, but despite her best efforts, the American could not match 24-time Grand Slam winner Margaret Court.
Novak Djokovic winning a 24th major title at Roland Garros last year could provide added motivation for Serena, who may well think her story may yet have a fairytale ending.
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A look back at some of the most iconic winning moments in US Open history
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