Tennis: Serena Williams Receives Wimbledon Singles Wild Card
Women’s tennis legend Serena Williams will return to WTA Tour action in the doubles event at Eastbourne, and she will also make a comeback to Grand Slam play at Wimbledon, where she has received a singles main draw wild card.
The Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) announced that Williams will pair with Tunisian Ons Jabeur in doubles at the Rothesay International in Eastbourne, a WTA 500 grass-court event. Eastbourne main-draw play begins on Sunday, June 19.
Wimbledon also announced that Williams has received a wild card for the singles main draw of the grass-court Grand Slam event. Williams is a seven-time Wimbledon singles champion and the Wimbledon main draw starts on Monday, June 27.
The stage awaits.
Our 7-time champion @serenawilliams will return to Wimbledon as a wild card this summer for her 21st appearance pic.twitter.com/7ddMAv7mOq
— Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) June 14, 2022
Williams, who has an Open Era record of 23 Grand Slam singles titles and has also won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles, will be making her first appearance on tour in nearly a year at Eastbourne.
Eastbourne will also mark Williams’s first doubles event on tour since she made the 2020 Auckland final paired with Caroline Wozniacki.
In her last match on tour, Williams was forced to retire with a leg injury in her 2021 Wimbledon first-round singles match against Aliaksandra Sasnovich.
But now, Eastbourne will resume Williams’s sparkling professional career of over 25 years. Williams has won 73 WTA singles titles and 23 WTA doubles titles, and she has spent 319 weeks as World No.1 in singles and eight weeks as World No.1 in doubles.
“Still over the moon with the news,” her upcoming partner Jabeur said after her first-round win in Berlin. “Hopefully we’re going to make a great team. I cannot wait to play with her, such a legend. I’ve always loved Serena, the way she plays, the way she is on court and outside the court.”
Williams has particularly excelled at Wimbledon since her tournament debut in 1998, where she immediately won the mixed doubles title alongside Max Mirnyi.
The long-time former World No.1’s most recent Wimbledon singles title came in 2016 when she defeated Angelique Kerber for her seventh singles crown. Recently, she has been a Wimbledon singles finalist in 2018 and 2019 as well.
Williams’s Wimbledon prowess also extends to women’s doubles. She and sister Venus are 6-0 in Wimbledon women’s doubles finals.
Chidi Nwoke/WTA.
