Serena and Venus Williams to play doubles together at Wimbledon
Serena and Venus Williams are bringing their doubles partnership back to Wimbledon.
The All England Club has announced that the sisters have received a doubles wildcard invitation to the tournament, which starts in less than two weeks.
The move comes after Serena, 44, recently returned to competition after nearly four years away from professional tennis.
Venus, who still competes occasionally, turns 46 on Wednesday.
The Williams sisters have won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles, the first in 2000 and the last at Wimbledon in 2016.
Serena won her first doubles match with partner Victoria Mboko at the Queen’s Club in London last week and was due to play doubles with Carolina Muchova at the Berlin Open later on Tuesday.
The Williams sisters last played doubles together at the 2022 US Open and lost their opening matches. This was the first time they played doubles together in 4.5 years.
Serena and Mboko won their opening match at the Queen’s Club but were forced to withdraw after Mboko suffered a knee injury in the singles match.
Serena did not rule out the possibility of a comeback in singles either, and one of the eight wild cards in women’s singles was left “to be announced”.
As well as French Open finalist Maja Chwalinska, six British women also received singles wildcards: Harriet Dart, Alicia Dudeney, Hannah Klugman, Mika Stojsavljevic, Katie Swan and Mimi Xu.
Kyrgios received wildcard in men’s doubles
In men’s doubles, Alexander Bublik and Nick Kyrgios were given a wild card. Kyrgios was a singles finalist in 2022.
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Wild cards in the men’s singles went to Stan Wawrinka and Grigor Dimitrov and four British players: Jacob Fearnley, Arthur Fery, Jack Pinnington Jones and Toby Samuel.
Wawrinka, a three-time Grand Slam champion whose best result at Wimbledon is twice reaching the quarter-finals, plans to retire at the end of the year.
Dimotrov was forced to retire early in the third round due to a pectoral muscle injury after cutting eventual champion Jannik Sinner two sets to none in last year’s round of 16. Dimitrov is currently ranked 169th. Two more wild cards were left open in men’s singles.
2021 Wimbledon finalist Matteo Berrettini was left off the list despite being in the quarter-finals of the French Open. He was ranked 49th but was outside the top 100 when Wimbledon’s participation list was compiled. However, Berrettini may have a chance to enter the main draw directly, depending on the withdrawals.
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