LONDON (AP) \u2014 Serena Williams will make her eagerly anticipated return to professional tennis playing doubles alongside a partner who is 25 years younger.<\/p>\n
Victoria Mboko, the 19-year-old Canadian ranked No. 9, revealed Thursday she would have the \u201chonor\u201d of playing with the 44-year-old Williams as wild-card entries at the Queen\u2019s Club next week.<\/p>\n
They practiced on the grass courts in west London on Thursday, with Williams seen hitting balls in a purple top and white pants.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Queen is back,\u201d Mboko wrote in a post on Instagram alongside a picture of her standing next to Williams.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn honor to share the court with one of the greatest athletes of all time this week,\u201d Mboko added. \u201cEven more excited to play doubles together! Tennis is pretty special.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking at the French Open last week, Mboko said of Williams: \u201cI really look up to her. I mean, the fact that she even knows me is very exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam singles champion, stepped away from tennis in 2022. She has yet to say whether she plans to play at Wimbledon or the U.S. Open in 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON (AP) \u2014 Serena Williams will make her eagerly anticipated return to professional tennis playing doubles alongside a partner who is 25 years younger. Victoria Mboko, the 19-year-old Canadian ranked No. 9, revealed Thursday she would have the \u201chonor\u201d of playing with the 44-year-old Williams as wild-card entries at the Queen\u2019s Club next week. They … Continue reading Serena Williams\u2019 tennis comeback to begin with 19-year-old doubles partner Victoria Mboko<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1452],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1512488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-06-06 12:38:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[0],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1512488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1512489,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512488\/revisions\/1512489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1512488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1512488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1512488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}