{"id":20394,"date":"2025-12-03T09:57:56","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T07:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/serena-williams-44-takes-step-toward-possible-return\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:31:42","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:31:42","slug":"serena-williams-44-takes-step-toward-possible-return","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/serena-williams-44-takes-step-toward-possible-return\/","title":{"rendered":"Serena Williams, 44, takes step toward possible return"},"content":{"rendered":"<div dir=\"ltr\">Former World Number One Serena Williams took a major step toward a potential return to professional tennis by recently re-entering the anti-doping testing pool, The Athletic reported Tuesday.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div>The 23-time Grand Slam champion&#8217;s name appeared on an October 6 list of players in the International Registered Testing Pool, a requirement for a return to competition.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;She has notified us that she wants to be reinstated into the testing pool,&#8221; Adrian Bassett, a spokesperson for the International Tennis Integrity Agency, confirmed in a text message Tuesday to The Athletic.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">&#8220;I do not know if this means she is coming back, or just giving herself the option. All I can say is she&#8217;s back in the pool and therefore subject to whereabouts.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div>A spokesperson for Williams did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div>Williams, 44, last played on the WTA Tour at the US Open in 2022. In August of that year, she announced in a Vogue magazine article that she was &#8220;evolving away&#8221; from tennis.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">&#8220;I have never liked the word retirement,&#8221; she wrote. &#8220;It doesn&#8217;t feel like a modern word to me. I&#8217;ve been thinking of this as a transition, but I want to be sensitive about how I use that word, which means something very specific and important to a community of people. Maybe the best word to describe what I&#8217;m up to is evolution.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">Ranked No. 1 for 319 weeks, Williams won 73 singles titles on the WTA Tour and earned nearly $95 million in prize money. She won Wimbledon and the Australian Open seven times each, the US Open six times and the French Open three times.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">Williams also won 14 major doubles titles with her sister, Venus. She is the only player to accomplish a career Golden Slam (all four majors) in both singles and doubles.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">Williams and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, are raising two daughters.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\u2014Reuters\u2014<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":20395,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-20394","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Williams last played on the WTA Tour at the US Open in 2022.","published_date":null,"news_description":"Williams last played on the WTA Tour at the US Open in 2022.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/20394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/20394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24448,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/20394\/revisions\/24448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=20394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}