Serena Williams was handed Wimbledon’s final wildcard on Sunday and will play singles at the tournament for the first time in nearly four years. The 44-year-old, who retired from the sport after the 2022 US Open, is also set to compete in doubles with Venus Williams, giving Wimbledon a comeback story that arrives just as the main draw picture is being set.
The timing matters because the wildcard came before the ladies’ qualifying singles draw was published on Monday, leaving the All England Club with only one place to fill when the decision was made. Williams had already been awarded a spot in the ladies’ doubles draw alongside Venus, and her return now gives her a route into both competitions at the same Championships.
Williams has spent this week training on the grass courts of the All England Club after resuming her doubles career at the start of the grass-court season. She opened that comeback in Queen’s Club alongside Victoria Mboko, then played with Karolina Muchova in Berlin. The match in Berlin ended in defeat, but it showed she was already back in match play before Wimbledon made its call.
The question is how far that comeback can go in singles, where the work is harsher and the court asks more of a player than doubles does. Williams is 44, Venus is 46, and the gap between what she can manage in a doubles point and what she must sustain across a singles match is the real test now. Her own answer in Berlin was blunt enough. When asked about a singles wildcard, she said it was the question of the hour and added that she did not know.
That uncertainty sits on top of a long and uneven recent history at Wimbledon. Williams has not won a singles match there since 2019. She suffered a serious hamstring injury in her first-round match in 2021 after falling on a slippery Centre Court, then lost in the first round of Wimbledon 2022 to Harmony Tan. Before that, she beat Anett Kontaveit at the US Open and then lost a dramatic three-set battle to Ajla Tomljanovic, a match that became her last singles appearance before retirement.
For Wimbledon, the wildcard is both a headline and a gamble on one of the sport’s most recognisable figures. Williams is a 23-time grand slam singles champion and a seven-time Wimbledon singles champion, which is why the return matters even after so much time away. Whether she can turn a short-notice comeback into more than one singles match is the part no one can answer yet, but her next steps are already clear: singles, doubles, and the kind of grass-court test that will tell the story quickly.
