Serena Williams will play Grand Slam singles for the first time since the 2022 US Open when she opens her Wimbledon campaign against Australia’s Maya Joint, a first-round draw that reads as a gentle reentry on paper but hardens quickly into one of the most demanding early routes in the women’s field.
Williams, 44, accepted a wild card into the singles draw on 21 June, taking the eighth and final place the All England Club had reserved on the women’s side. The 23-time major champion and seven-time Wimbledon winner is scheduled to begin on Tuesday, with the top half of the draw opening the Championships on Monday.
The opener. Joint, 20, arrives in poor form despite a respectable ranking, having gone 2-13 in tour-level main draws this season and lost in the first round at Wimbledon a year ago. The two have never met. On those numbers the match favors Williams, but the larger unknown sits on her own side of the net. She has not contested a singles match in four years, and her comeback to date has run entirely through the doubles court — a win and a withdrawal alongside Victoria Mboko at Queen’s Club, then a first-round loss with Karolína Muchová in Berlin.
The wall. The harder test is likely the second round. The winner of Williams-Joint meets the winner of No. 29 seed Alexandra Eala and Renata Zarazúa of Mexico, and Eala is the section’s genuine danger. The 21-year-old Filipina reached the Berlin semi-finals this month on the back of consecutive top-10 wins over Elena Rybakina and Elina Svitolina, form that makes her a far stiffer obstacle than a struggling qualifier-level opener would suggest. For a player still rebuilding match sharpness, a second-round meeting with one of the tour’s most in-form grass-courters is a steep early ask.
The ceiling. Beyond that, the third quarter belongs to Iga Swiatek. The defending champion and No. 3 seed opens against Taylor Townsend and would, in all likelihood, await in the third round — the realistic upper bound on Williams’ run. The same quarter also houses Svitolina, Marta Kostyuk and Jasmine Paolini, leaving little soft ground past the opening match. Taken together, the bracket points to a probable exit by the round of 32 rather than a deep second-week return, with each round a meaningful step up in quality.
The singles entry adds to a doubles wild card Williams already held with her sister, Venus, their first pairing at the All England Club in a decade. Whatever the result, the draw frames the story plainly: the headline is the return, not the run it is likely to produce.
