American great Serena Williams will return to Wimbledon with her sister Venus \u200cfollowing a four-year absence after the All England Club gave the pair a doubles wildcard this Tuesday and added a fascinating storyline to this year’s tournament.<\/p>\n
Serena has 23 Grand Slam singles titles, \u200bincluding seven at Wimbledon, and has also captured six doubles titles at \u200bthe All England Club playing alongside her older sibling.<\/p>\n
The 44-year-old made \u2060a long-awaited comeback this month at the Queen’s Club Championships, playing doubles with Canadian \u200bteenager Victoria Mboko.<\/p>\n
That partnership was cut short after Mboko suffered a knee injury that \u200bruled her out of Wimbledon.
\nWilliams is now gearing up for the grasscourt Grand Slam beginning on June 29 by playing doubles in Berlin this week partnering Karolina Muchova.
\nHer last match at Wimbledon was \u200bin 2022 when she also needed a wildcard and lost to Harmony Tan \u200bin the first round.<\/p>\n
Wildcards are handed to players whose ranking does not allow them automatic entry and \u200care \u2060usually reserved for high-profile players returning from injury or those from the home nation.<\/p>\n
But when Williams announced she was returning to the match court after her decision four years ago to “evolve away from tennis” it was likely she would gain a Wimbledon \u200bwildcard.<\/p>\n
Among those receiving wildcards \u200bon the men’s \u2060side were three-times Grand Slam champion Stan Wawrinka, who is set to retire at the end of the season, and former \u200bWimbledon semi-finalist Grigor Dimitrov.
\nOrganisers have two more men’s singles slots to \u200bfill, with \u20602021 runner-up Matteo Berrettini in the reckoning alongside Dan Evans, Nick Kyrgios and Gael Monfils.<\/p>\n
French Open runner-up Maja Chwalinska of Poland was among the beneficiaries on the women’s singles \u2060side, \u200bwhere one slot remains to be filled. A second \u200bbatch of wildcards is expected this week.<\/p>\n
In doubles, Katie Boulter and fellow Briton Heather Watson were given \u200ba wildcard as a pair.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":23116,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-37280","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Serena has 23 Grand Slam singles titles, \u200bincluding seven at Wimbledon.","published_date":"","news_description":"Serena has 23 Grand Slam singles titles, \u200bincluding seven at Wimbledon.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/37280","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\/37280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37281,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/37280\/revisions\/37281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=37280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}