Nearly four years after she last walked off a tour court, Serena Williams won a professional tennis match again, opening her comeback with a doubles victory at the Queen’s Club on Tuesday.
The 44-year-old, partnering 19-year-old Canadian Victoria Mboko, beat third seeds Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Erin Routliffe 7-6(2), 6-2 in the first round of the women’s doubles at the grass-court HSBC Championships. It was Williams’ first match since she bid farewell at the 2022 US Open, a goodbye she pointedly declined to call a retirement, preferring to say she was “evolving” away from the sport.
On court the trademarks were intact. Williams served up to 120 mph, leaning on the power that built one of the most decorated careers in the game’s history, and the pairing of a 23-time Grand Slam singles champion with one of the tour’s brightest young talents proved too much for two of the circuit’s most accomplished doubles specialists. Mboko, who has already won two titles at 19, said she felt honoured to share the court and that the duo were intent on going further in the draw.
What it means. Williams returns with 23 major singles titles and 14 in doubles, six of the latter won at Wimbledon alongside her sister Venus. For now her comeback is confined to doubles, and she was careful not to commit to more. Asked whether she would extend it to singles, or to Wimbledon, which begins on 29 June, she said she was taking it “a day at a time” and that organisers had given her room to decide.
Whatever she chooses, the grass-court fortnight has its headline act. Williams and Mboko move into the second round, and the question of how far this revival runs — and whether it reaches the All England Club — will follow her through the swing.
