PARIS (AP) — Serena Williams is returning to professional tennis at age 44 after nearly four years away from the sport.
The 23-time Grand Slam singles champion has accepted a wild card invitation to play doubles at the upcoming Queen’s Club grass-court tournament in London, the WTA Tour announced Monday.
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FILE - Serena Williams motions a heart to fans during the third round of the U.S. Open tennis championships, Sept. 2, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, file)
FILE - United States Serena Williams plays a return to Romania's Mihaela Buzarnescu during their second round match on day four of the French Open tennis tournament at Roland Garros in Paris on June 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)
FILE - Serena Williams, of the United States, prepares to serve against Anett Kontaveit, of Estonia, during the second round of the U.S. Open tennis championships, Aug. 31, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
FILE - Serena Williams, of the United States, returns a shot to Anett Kontaveit, of Estonia, during the second round of the U.S. Open tennis championships, Aug. 31, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
Williams also made a post on social media with the caption, “Guess everybody heard the news.” The post had a video with her phone ringing, during which she said, “I gotta change my number.”
The Queen’s Club tournament starts next Monday and the WTA said Williams will play “with a partner to be announced in due course.”
A return on grass will raise speculation that Williams also plans to compete at Wimbledon, which starts June 28. She’s won seven singles titles at the All England Club.
Williams has not competed since bidding farewell at the 2022 U.S. Open. At the time, Williams said she didn’t want to use the word “retiring” and instead declared that she was “evolving” away from tennis.
“Serena brought the game to another level and it is incredible for the sport that she’s pushing the boundaries and coming back,” said Martina Navratilova, the previous oldest former No. 1 to launch a comeback, at 43 years, 10 months.
“To many of the younger players, they never had the opportunity to play her; some may have never watched her on television so this will be a new and exciting experience,” Navratilova said.
Williams, who has also won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles, became eligible to compete in February after re-registering with tennis’ mandatory anti-doping program six months earlier — which is the first step toward a comeback.
Four-time major winner Naomi Osaka, who beat Williams in the 2018 U.S. Open final for her first major title, was excited at the prospect.
“It will bring people to watch tennis,” Osaka said Thursday at the French Open. “I’m going to be tuned into the first match, for sure. I think a lot of people are. Everyone knows Serena and Venus were my role models growing up, so it’s going to be cool to see her on the grounds again.”
Williams recently posted a video on Instagram showing herself training on a hard court with her daughter: “Rumor has it…I got a new trainer,” Williams said in the post.
Williams’ second daughter was born in 2023.
When it was revealed last year that Williams had signed up to return to the drug-testing pool, she wrote on social media: “Omg yall I’m NOT coming back. This wildfire is crazy.”
Williams' older sister, Venus, is still playing occasionally at 45.
“One of my biggest regrets was not being able to play her,” defending French Open champion Coco Gauff said in Paris. “It would be cool for this sport to have a legend back playing.”
American player, Iva Jovic, 18, also sounded thrilled.
“I think it’s amazing. It’s really cool,” she said. “I have never seen Serena in real life. Obviously I grew up watching her. In my entire childhood she was dominating tennis, so it’s going to be incredible.”
Like Osaka, she thinks it will boost tennis in general.
“It’s going to make a lot of headlines and it’s something that people are going to talk about,” Jovic said.
Added fellow American player Madison Keys, “Serena Williams playing tennis is only good for tennis. Let’s be real. We all want to watch Serena play tennis.
“I mean, you literally get to watch history every single time she takes the court,” Keys added. “So why not watch more?”
WTA chair Valerie Camillo said that “Serena is one of the greatest athletes of all-time, with a legacy that extends far beyond the court.
“Her return is an expression of her passion for competition and I cannot wait to see her face a new generation of top players," Camillo added. “Serena is not just a great champion. She’s a successful entrepreneur, a powerful advocate for the issues that matter – and one of the most iconic women in the world. We are thrilled to welcome her back to the WTA Tour at this hugely exciting moment for women’s tennis.”
AP Sports Writer Jerome Pugmire in Paris contributed to this report.
AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis
FILE - Serena Williams motions a heart to fans during the third round of the U.S. Open tennis championships, Sept. 2, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, file)
FILE - United States Serena Williams plays a return to Romania's Mihaela Buzarnescu during their second round match on day four of the French Open tennis tournament at Roland Garros in Paris on June 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)
FILE - Serena Williams, of the United States, prepares to serve against Anett Kontaveit, of Estonia, during the second round of the U.S. Open tennis championships, Aug. 31, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
FILE - Serena Williams, of the United States, returns a shot to Anett Kontaveit, of Estonia, during the second round of the U.S. Open tennis championships, Aug. 31, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Bombastic pro-Trump lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella pulled ahead in Colombia’s presidential race in the first round of elections over the weekend, capitalizing on a growing appetite for crackdowns on criminal groups across Latin America.
Second-place finisher, progressive Sen. Iván Cepeda, and his ally, President Gustavo Petro, have questioned the election results, without providing evidence.
Cepeda on Monday called on de la Espriella to debate him ahead of their June 21 runoff. De la Espriella replied on X: “Are you ready, coward? … First, acknowledge the election results and let’s debate right now.”
De la Espriella rapidly gained traction ahead of Sunday’s election and won nearly 44% of the vote. Cepeda, who had consistently led polling, won less than 41%.
In the runoff, De la Espriella is expected to scoop up additional votes from Colombians who supported other conservative candidates in the first round.
Cepeda will face an uphill battle, said Sergio Guzmán, a political analyst. De la Espriella's win is "a shift in public opinion that is very difficult to overcome. So now Abelardo is emerging as the likely favorite to win.”
Markets in Colombia and the Colombian peso jumped on Monday, likely a product of de la Espriella’s proposal to roll back regulations on businesses and willingness to open the country to fracking — a sharp turn from Petro’s environmental agenda.
The 47-year-old De la Espriella, known as “El Tigre” or “The Tiger,” has never held office in Colombia and prided himself on living a luxurious life in Italy before deciding to run for president.
He pitched himself as an outsider who would cozy up to U.S. President Donald Trump and follow El Salvador President Nayib Bukele's war on gangs, which has driven down homicide rates but fueled accusations of human rights abuses.
“I will wipe out narcoterrorism and those who I've declared a military target like cockroaches, like rats. I will unleash upon them the wrath of God never seen before,” de la Espriella said in an interview with The Associated Press in the final stretch of the campaign, where he promised to open 10 mega-prisons to fight crime.
He joins a growing number of leaders across Latin America, from Chile to Honduras, seeking to latch onto the “Bukele model” as voters across Latin America are ditching leaders who pitched progressive policies aimed at addressing the root issues of conflict such as lack of opportunities for young people and corruption.
De la Espriella's supporters come from a wide range of backgrounds. Yolanda Peréz, a 64-year-old woman serving coffee in Colombia's capital, Bogotá, said with a wink the day before the election: “I'm thinking of voting for El Tigre.”
Miguel Maheca, a 20-year-old first-time voter, flashed his ballot to his mother as he strolled out of the polling station on Sunday, saying with a grin, “Love isn't what's going to make us safe in Colombia."
But experts say El Salvador's security successes will be nearly impossible to replicate in a country like Colombia, which is more than 50 times larger than the Central American nation and has many more armed groups fighting for territory.
The Trump administration is playing a more aggressive role in Latin America than any U.S. government in decades, putting mounting pressure on countries like Colombia, Mexico and Ecuador to crack down on crime.
De la Espriella made a name for himself as a lawyer defending high-profile clients such as former President Álvaro Uribe as well as controversial figures like Alex Saab, a close ally of Venezuela’s ousted president Nicolás Maduro who faces legal issues in the U.S.
The progressive Cepeda has promised to carry on his ally Petro's fraught plan to achieve “total peace” by negotiating peace pacts with guerrillas and criminal gangs.
Their political movement was born from a rejection by many Colombians of a militarized offensive by Uribe in decades past to beat back guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Thousands of civilians were killed by Colombian forces in a scandal known as “false positives.”
De la Espriella “represents a return to the paramilitary politics and drug-trafficking — a mafia-run, plutocratic and corrupt past that the country experienced during Álvaro Uribe’s two administrations,” Cepeda said on Sunday.
Petro, a former rebel, won Colombia's presidency in 2022, ending decades of domination by leaders from Uribe's political movement. He gained massive support from rural-dwelling, Indigenous and poorer Colombians who felt they had never been directly spoken to by the country's leaders.
Now that movement is backed into a corner.
“This is de la Espriella’s election to lose,” wrote Renata Segura, director of International Crisis Group's Latin America and the Caribbean Program. “Cepeda thought he could win appealing squarely to the left, and that proved to be a massive mistake. How he pivots in the next month will determine if he has any chance to win.”
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
This version corrects the spelling of the first name of the leading candidate to Abelardo.
Soldiers guard during the presidential election in Santander de Quilichao, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Santiago Saldarriaga)
Supporters of presidential candidate Ivan Cepeda of the ruling Historic Pact coalition gather outside the polling station where he voted during the presidential election in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
Presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella of the Defenders of the Motherland movement addresses supporters from inside a bulletproof booth after leading the first round of the presidential election and advancing to a runoff in Barranquilla, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)
Supporters of presidential candidate Ivan Cepeda of the ruling Historic Pact coalition react as presidential election results are announced in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
Presidential candidate Ivan Cepeda of the ruling Historic Pact coalition addresses supporters after advancing to a runoff election in second place in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix) CORRECTION: Corrects Paloma Valencia to Ivan Cepeda, and photographer Jose Vargas to Matias Delacroix
Presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella of the Defenders of the Motherland movement addresses supporters from inside a bulletproof booth after leading the first round of the presidential election and advancing to a runoff in Barranquilla, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)
Supporters of presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella of the Defenders of the Motherland movement celebrate election results in Barranquilla, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)
Presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella of the Defenders of the Motherland movement depart a polling station after voting during the presidential election in Barranquilla, Colombia, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)
