The 44-year-old tennis icon Serena Williams is returning to competitive tennis this month, announcing plans to play in the HSBC Championships in London. The move comes nearly four years after Williams retired.
"I'm excited to be back competing on one of the sport's most iconic stages," Williams said in a statement released by the tournament.
Williams will play under a wild card entry in the doubles bracket, which kicks off on June 8.
The Tennis Channel, which will be streaming the event, called it a "generational announcement."
In her own statement, Williams — who's been busy as a businesswoman, philanthropist and a mother of two — stopped short of saying she might seek to return to a full tennis schedule. Instead, she said the mid-tier WTA 500 event "feels like the perfect place to begin this next chapter."
Still, the timing is tantalizing for tennis fans who want to see Williams play more this summer: The HSBC Championships, held on the grass courts of The Queen's Club, is routinely seen as a warm-up tournament for Wimbledon, which begins in late June.
When she does take the court in London, Williams will be the rare wild card whose time as a WTA World No.1 is measured not in weeks or months, but years: over six. She will also bring the winning statistics that cemented her legacy, including 23 Grand Slam singles titles (the most among women in the Open era) and multiple Olympic medals in singles and doubles.
Official reports of Williams' return come roughly six months after news outlets reported that she had placed her name back into tennis' anti-doping system, the Registered Testing Pool managed by the International Tennis Integrity Agency, or ITIA. The step was widely seen as indicating Williams would come out of retirement, but she stated at the time that she was "NOT coming back."
Williams is one of nine former No. 1 women's singles players who have returned to the WTA Tour after becoming a mother, according to the WTA.
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