Serena Williams Returns to Singles: Faces Maya Joint at Wimbledon

Serena Williams returns to Grand Slam singles nearly four years later: the Wimbledon draw has handed the American, who entered on a wild card, a first-round match against twenty-year-old Australian Maya Joint. The match will take place between Monday June 29 and Tuesday June 30, on the opening days of the Championships.

At 44, the seven-time Wimbledon champion has not played a singles match since that third-round loss at the 2022 US Open against Ajla Tomljanovic, when she saved five match points. Since then she had spoken of an evolution away from tennis, never of a formal retirement. Now comes the clash with Joint, born in 2006, whom she has never faced and who at London represents a generation that Williams has watched grow up from courtside.

The historical stakes are high: should she win the first round, Serena would become the fourth-oldest woman in the Open era to win a singles match at a Major. The record still belongs to Martina Navratilova, who managed it at 47.

It won't be her only engagement in London. At Wimbledon, Williams will also play doubles alongside her sister Venus, 46, also admitted by invitation. A choice that Serena herself has tied less to results and more to the desire to return to the courts that wrote her history.