Serena Williams is back at the All England Club for the first time since 2022, but her Wimbledon return almost never happened, and not for the reasons you might expect. Speaking at a packed press conference on Sunday, the 44-year-old revealed that the demands of anti-doping compliance were a serious deterrent to lacing up her racket again.
"It's gruelling. That was a big reason why I didn't want to come back," Williams said, describing the whereabouts protocol as both "unprofessional" and "unreasonable." Under ITIA rules, players in the testing pool must be available for no-notice testing during a designated one-hour window every single day, and accumulating three missed tests within a 12-month period can trigger a sanction. Williams, who rejoined the testing pool back in December, juggles motherhood, a fashion business, and a venture capital firm across multiple time zones, a schedule she says makes compliance genuinely challenging.
Williams did mischaracterise one aspect of the rules, suggesting missed contact outside the designated hour could count as a strike. The ITIA clarified that is not the case, and confirmed the protocols themselves have not changed since Williams stepped away from the sport. Still, her frustration speaks to a broader conversation that has gained urgency after Marketa Vondrousova, the 2023 Wimbledon champion, received a four-year ban for refusing a test.
Despite her reservations, Williams talked herself into accepting a wild-card singles entry, on top of the doubles she'll contest alongside sister Venus. She faces 20-year-old Australian Maya Joint on Tuesday on Centre Court, carrying 23 Grand Slam singles titles and a career's worth of big-match experience into a completely unscripted chapter.
TennisDraw users have been buzzing over how deep Williams can realistically go in the draw this fortnight.