Never in our lifetimes will we see such fevered anticipation for a doubles match at Queens Club. But it’s been a long time coming. After a surreptitious return to the sport’s testing pool, and an outright denial of a return to professional tennis, followed by the not-quite-denial evasion in a TV interview, the much-studied snippets of practice sessions, a slew of endorsement tie-ins, the official announcement of a wild card, and a pre-tournament press conference so sought after that journalists fled Roland-Garros early to be there, we have now heard the words spoken aloud by a chair umpire: “Serena Williams to serve.” She’s back. Though the extent to which she’s “back” will be a source of much speculation in the months to come, I’ll spare you the suspense and say that she is looking pretty sharp out there on the court at age 44. I’m eager to see more.

Now I feel a little cheaped out of having attended what I thought was going to be Serena’s last-ever professional match. I’ll never forget the sounds in Arthur Ashe Stadium as she played out the 2022 US Open, eventually losing in the third round, with style. In the end Ajla Tomljanovic needed six match points to retire the legend, on a night of great tennis and even better theater. In a Vogue open letter ahead of that Open, Williams said she was “evolving away” from tennis, rather than retiring from it. The distance between that match and the start of her doubles match at Queens this week: 1,376 days. In that span she gave birth to a second child, attended the occasional tennis tournament as a spectator, and—this seems to be a key prong of her messaging around her return—shed weight using a GLP-1 drug for which her husband, Alexis Ohanion, is an early investor and board member. 

Last year she said that the weight loss relieved stress on her knee joints that she noticed especially after giving birth to her first child. “That, quite frankly, definitely had an effect on maybe some wins that I could have had in my career,” she said in a 2025 interview with the Today show. Is her return to professional competition meant to serve as proof of concept? (The legality of those GLP-1 drugs in tennis, moving forward, was explored thoughtfully by Matt Futterman over at The Athletic this week.) Serena has endorsed the product in a Super Bowl spot and remains a fixture in subway ads. I’m very curious to see how she navigates this public return while balancing her roles as a beloved tennis player and highly visible businesswoman. Often these two incentives will fall into alignment, but perhaps not always.

Though Serena hasn’t ruled out an eventual singles return, she said before the tournament that she “probably needs to train a little bit more” to get back to that level. Doubles meant there’d be less ground to cover for a given player, plus points played at the net rather than grinding at the baseline. It also meant that she’d have to choose a partner. She went with Victoria Mboko, the 19-year-old Canadian whose stunning breakout last season has since been slowed by injuries. In her presser before the tournament, Serena explained why she went with the young Canadian, and those comments were broken down so astutely by Ben Rothenberg over at Bounces that I am left with minimal understanding of how this partnership came together, but regardless, this duo, separated by 25 years, took out the No. 3-seeded team of Erin Routliffe and Nicole Melichar-Martinez, 7–6(2), 6–2, who probably didn’t play their best under the unusual spotlight. Great level from Serena in a few different respects: reflexes at the net, aces as fast as 120 mph, and the occasional vintage ground stroke on the run. These are necessary but not sufficient conditions for a return to her old singles glory, so let’s see how her game develops from here.

We’ll have to wait a little longer to gather more information, since Mboko sustained an injury in her singles match, causing the pair to withdraw from the doubles at Queens after that one match win. But Williams said she’ll be back on court for more doubles in Berlin next week, and she has said she’s deciding whether to accept a doubles wild card for Wimbledon. I welcome a good un-retirement storyline, especially for an athlete so dominant at her peak that even a diminished version could retain real narrative intrigue and play some entertaining matches. It would also be a great test of how a historically great player can adapt to the new landscape of a sport that has continued evolving after her departure. We’re getting well ahead of ourselves here, but how could anyone not want to see her battle against Aryna Sabalenka?