{"id":21880,"date":"2026-01-02T07:13:58","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T05:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/grand-slam-champion-venus-williams-to-make-history-at-melbourne-park\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:32:50","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:32:50","slug":"grand-slam-champion-venus-williams-to-make-history-at-melbourne-park","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/grand-slam-champion-venus-williams-to-make-history-at-melbourne-park\/","title":{"rendered":"Grand Slam champion, Venus Williams to make history at Melbourne Park\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>The 45-year-old older of the Williams sisters, Venus has been given a wildcard entry by the Australian Open organisers. Venus will feature in the main draw of the Australian Open for the first time since 2021. It will be her 22nd appearance at the Australian Open and first at the venue after five years. Venus will surpass Japan&#8217;s Kimiko Date, who held the record previously aged 44 at the 2015 Australian Open.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":21881,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[78,20],"class_list":["post-21880","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Venus Williams\u00a0will write her name into history books when the seven-time Grand Slam\u00a0singles champion make her return to the Melbourne Park as the oldest woman to compete in a season-opening major","published_date":"2026-01-02 00:00:00","news_description":"Venus Williams\u00a0will write her name into history books when the seven-time Grand Slam\u00a0singles champion make her return to the Melbourne Park as the oldest woman to compete in a season-opening major","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/21880","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\/21880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25378,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/21880\/revisions\/25378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=21880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}