Serena Williams returned to competitive singles action on Tuesday amid huge fanfare after a four-year absence but the American icon could not overcome the first hurdle at Wimbledon and was beaten 6-3 6-7(6) 6-3 by Australian Maya \u200bJoint.<\/p>\n
The 44-year-old wildcard was denied the chance to become the oldest woman to claim a singles match victory at the All England Club since Martina Navratilova in 2004, \u200cbut she said she was delighted with the reception she got from adoring fans.<\/p>\n
“It was really great to be back at Wimbledon,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I never expected to be here. The atmosphere was amazing. Walking out was amazing. I definitely relished it and missed it and enjoyed the moment more than anything.”<\/p>\n
Joint, who was not even born when Williams won the first seven of her 23 Grand Slam singles titles, blocked out all the noise surrounding her opponent’s much-awaited return to claim \u200bthe biggest victory of her career on Centre Court.<\/p>\n
“I really don’t know what to say right now. I don’t know what just happened,” said the 20-year-old.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t get much \u200bsleep last night, I was up until 2 a.m. just thinking about it. Walking out (today), I forgot the warm-up, I don’t know what happened. My legs \u2060weren’t moving. I don’t know how I got a pretty good start in the match.<\/p>\n
“She has so much aura, she’s such a legend. This court has had so many huge names play on it. \u200bI’ve been dreaming about this since I was a little kid so this is pretty crazy.”<\/p>\n
While Williams can look forward to the doubles tournament with her older sister Venus, Joint will take on Filipino 29th seed \u200bAlexandra Eala next.
\nMeanwhile, as the day wound to a close, Stan Wawrinka, 41, bid goodbye to fans in his final Wimbledon appearance after a marathon 6-7(7) 7-6(16) 7-6(7) 7-6(5) defeat by Matteo Berrettini.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2014Reuters\u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[],"class_list":["post-38491","news","type-news","status-publish","hentry","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The 44-year-old wildcard was denied the chance to become the oldest woman to claim a singles match victory at the All England Club.","published_date":"","news_description":"The 44-year-old wildcard was denied the chance to become the oldest woman to claim a singles match victory at the All England Club.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38491","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\/38491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38492,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38491\/revisions\/38492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=38491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}