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The biggest news going into the second week of this year\u2019s riveting French Open? It\u2019s not the heated disputes over line calls; it\u2019s not Frances Tiafoe yelling at his opponent, \u201cDon\u2019t act like you\u2019re tough\u2014you\u2019re not hard, bro\u201d in a different dispute; it\u2019s not the players\u2019 earlier media boycott to protest the money they\u2019re paid by the tournament; it\u2019s not a raft of upsets that have seen the ouster of Jannik Sinner, Novak Djokovic, Coco Gauff, and a host of other top-ranked players.<\/p>\n
No: The big news today is that tennis legend and 23-time Grand Slam winner Serena Williams has confirmed what some of us have either known or suspected for a while now: that she is indeed, after four years away from it, coming back to play pro tennis\u2014at least at Queens, the famed grass-court Wimbledon warm-up tournament in London, where she will play doubles with the rising star Victoria Mboko.<\/p>\n
\u201cQueen\u2019s Club feels like the perfect place to begin this next chapter,\u201d Serena, 44, said in a statement earlier today. \u201cGrass has given me some of the most meaningful moments of my career, and I’m excited to be back competing on one of the sport’s most iconic stages.\u201d<\/p>\n
That Serena was thinking about coming back to the sport was itself no secret: She entered the mandatory drug-testing protocols required of all players last year, and after six months in that program became technically eligible to play again in February. And she\u2019s been offering both subtle and not-so-subtle teasers in recent interviews, ad campaigns, and social media posts.<\/p>\n
For Mboko, of course, it\u2019s the stuff childhood dreams are made of. \u201cShe\u2019s my idol,\u201d Mboko said at a news conference at the French Open, \u201cso it\u2019s really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Queens tournament begins on June 8. Serena enters the tournament after requesting a wild card\u2014given that she\u2019s been away from the tour for so long, it\u2019s the only way she\u2019ll be able to enter prestigious tournaments like Queens or, if we\u2019re lucky, any Grand Slam tournaments. Not that securing a wild card would seem to present any issue for the woman who won 73 singles titles and earned $95 (aside from her commercial endorsements) during her legendary earlier career.<\/p>\n
We\u2014along with the rest of the tennis world, as well as the legions of fans Serena brought from outside of the sport\u2014will be eagerly watching her progress.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n