This is the real deal now.
After initially returning in doubles, Serena Williams is ramping up her tennis return with singles, too.
At Wimbledon, of all places.
All eyes will be on the 44-year-old Williams when she competes in the first round of the grass-court Grand Slam, which starts Monday.
While she has played two doubles warmup matches recently, Williams hasn’t contested an official singles match in nearly four years.
ESPN commentator Mary Joe Fernandez called it “a sign of confidence” that Serena is prepared to enter the sport’s most prestigious tournament without having played a singles match in so long.
“But if anybody can do it,” Fernandez said, “it’s Serena.”
Added fellow ESPN commentator Patrick McEnroe, “I would call this Serena being Serena. It’s very Serena-like to do something audacious like this and I didn’t think for one minute she was coming back to play doubles (only).”
Williams has accepted wild card invitations for both singles and doubles (with sister Venus) from the All England Club.
Williams made her return this month by playing two doubles matches with two different partners. She won with Victoria Mboko at Queen’s Club and lost with Karolina Muchova at the Berlin Open.
Williams’ powerful serve and returns were on display but it remains to be seen how well she can cover the entire court and how much stamina she has for singles.
With 23 Grand Slam singles titles — seven of them at Wimbledon — and 14 more in doubles (all with Venus as her partner), nobody is questioning her qualifications, experience or aura.
“Hopefully she’ll be able to be competitive right off the bat,” McEnroe added.
Serena also swept the singles and doubles (with Venus) titles at the 2012 London Olympics, when the tennis competition was held on the hallowed grass of the All England Club. And she was the runner-up four times in singles at Wimbledon.
Serena will learn who her first-round opponent is on Friday when the singles draws for Wimbledon are held. Then her opening match will be either next Monday or Tuesday.
“No one’s going to want to face her,” said Fernandez, who coached Williams as Fed Cup captain and on the U.S. Olympic team.
The Williams sisters’ opening doubles match will come later in the opening week.
Despite her resume, Serena is by no means the favorite for the trophy.
Among the top contenders are top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka, 2022 champion Elena Rybakina and freshly crowned French Open champion Mirra Andreeva, who at 19 is 25 years younger than Serena.
Sabalenka is looking to bounce back from a crushing defeat at Roland Garros, where she let a big lead slip away and didn’t win a game in the third set of a loss to Diana Shnaider in the quarterfinals.
Rybakina is known as one of the game’s best servers and her game adapts well to grass.
Andreeva reached the quarterfinals in London last year and will have more confidence after her performance in Paris.
Iga Swiatek is the defending champion and moves well on grass.
Since Serena has no ranking and won’t be seeded, she could potentially face any of the top players in the opening round.
With Carlos Alcaraz still sidelined with a right wrist injury that also kept him out of the French Open, Jannik Sinner is favored to defend his title — even after the top-ranked Sinner's stunning second-round meltdown in a Paris heat wave.
“It’s Sinner and then it’s everyone else,” McEnroe said. “That’s the bottom line on the men’s side.”
French Open champion Alexander Zverev has never been past the fourth round at the All England Club and lost his opening match a year ago.
Sinner’s biggest challenger could be 39-year-old Novak Djokovic, who like Serena is a seven-time Wimbledon champion. A 24-time Grand Slam champion overall, Djokovic has reached the semifinals or better in his last seven appearances at the All England Club.
“He’s so comfortable on the grass,” Fernandez said. “This is for me is where he has his best chance to win another major.”
So with a combined age of 83, Serena and Djokovic could be ready for a repeat of 2015, when they won Wimbledon in the same year.
AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis
Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus returns the ball as she plays against Nikola Bartunkova of Czech Republic during their women's singles quarter-final match at the WTA 500 Berlin Open tennis tournament at the Steffi Graf Stadium, in Berlin, Germany, Friday, June 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Serena Williams of the U.S. tosses the ball in the air to serve as she and Czech Republic's Karolina Muchova play during their round of 16 doubles match against New Zealand's Erin Routliffe and Mexico's Giuliana Olmo during the WTA 500 Berlin Open tennis tournament at Steffi Graf Stadium, in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, June 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Serena Williams of the U.S. returns the ball as she and Czech Republic's Karolina Muchova play during their round of 16 doubles match against New Zealand's Erin Routliffe and Mexico's Giuliana Olmo during the WTA 500 Berlin Open tennis tournament at Steffi Graf Stadium, in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, June 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Iran’s president was traveling to Pakistan on Tuesday for talks with officials who have been mediating negotiations between Tehran and Washington on a permanent end to the war in the Middle East even as discrepancies were emerging on what had been agreed so far.
President Masoud Pezeshkian’s visit to Islamabad comes as technical teams were working on details of the deal, following high-level negotiations in Switzerland on Monday led by US Vice President JD Vance and Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf.
In Tehran, Iran's capital, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters that no visits have been scheduled for the U.N. watchdog — the International Atomic Energy Agency — to see Iranian nuclear sites bombed by the United States last year. Vance had previously said the negotiations in Switzerland won an agreement for IAEA to inspect the sites.
The IAEA has been in and out of Iran since Israel’s 12-day war against Iran in 2025, but has not been granted access to the bombed enrichment sites targeted by the U.S. in that war.
Violence flared again in southern Lebanon, threatening the fragile ceasefire there, as Israeli soldiers opened fire in the town of Nabatiyeh al-Fawqa on Tuesday, killing two men, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported. It said the men were next to a bulldozer that was working to clear the road at the time.
Separately, the agency said Israeli troops fired on residents on the outskirts of the town of Hadatha as they were heading to carry out a burial in the town’s ceremony with a Lebanese army escort.
There was no immediate comment from Israel on the reports.
Security was tight in the area of Islamabad where the Iranian president was to meet with President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. It's Pezeshkian's first visit since the conflict started with the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran on Feb. 28.
Pezeshkian and Sharif were to hold joint news conference after their discussions.
In the initial talks, marking the start of a 60-day diplomatic process that seeks to reach a permanent deal to end the Iran war, Iran and the U.S. agreed to create a “de-confliction cell” to address the fighting in Lebanon between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group. The U.S. said negotiators also discussed “mechanisms” to ensure the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for the transit of oil that Iran had effectively blocked during the war, remains open.
Ahead of his meetings in Pakistan, Pezeshkian cautioned that “the effectiveness of the talks depends on full commitment to the agreed obligations and their precise implementation.”
“Progress on this path will be measured by practical adherence to accepted responsibilities,” he wrote on X. “Statements outside the agreed text do not help advance the negotiations.”
Iran suggested the ongoing technical talks in Switzerland have led to the creation of specific negotiation groups, which include those focused on sanctions relief, nuclear issues, reconstruction and monitoring, according to a the state-run IRNA news agency.
The report quoted Kazem Gharibabadi, a deputy foreign minister leading the technical talks, saying that the countries involved also formed a contact mechanism over ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz and over the fighting in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah.
It remains unclear whether the de-confliction cell being created will be enough to stop fighting between the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Israel, which occupies part of Lebanon and insists it must maintain a free hand to attack militants launching attacks into northern Israel.
Following the high-level talks in Switzerland, Vance had said if Iranian financial assets were unfrozen they would be used to buy American-grown food.
Vance said that the U.S. and Qatar would have approval over the process, but if Iranian money becomes accessible as sanctions are lifted, it “would actually go to buy American soy, American corn and American wheat for the benefit of the Iranian people.”
However, Iran has no current demand for U.S. crops and Baghaei said on Tuesday that Tehran’s decisions on what to import would be based upon “prices and quality.”
“It is interesting that the philosophy and goal of the war, which was the destruction of the Iranian civilization and the collapse of Iran, has become enriching American farmers,” Baghaei said at the news conference in Tehran.
Iran’s ambassador in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, also questioned Vance’s contention that the U.S. and Qatar would have to approve how Iran uses unfrozen funds.
“Iran is the only country who decides what to do with those assets,” he told reporters.
Mediators Pakistan and Qatar said the cell would include the Lebanese government and would “ensure the adherence of the termination of military operations in Lebanon,” but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised new questions late on Monday, saying his military still has “full freedom of action to thwart any direct or emerging threat to them or to the residents of the north.”
Neither Israel nor Hezbollah are signatories to the U.S.-Iran deal, and Netanyahu has vowed to keep his forces in southern Lebanon until any threat to Israel is eliminated. Hezbollah has refused to halt attacks unless Israel commits to withdrawing.
When asked about Netanyahu’s comments, U.S. President Donald Trump later said “we’re going to take a look at it,” adding that he wouldn’t say what action he would take but that the situation would “get solved.”
“I’m a problem solver, I get problems solved real fast, including with Bibi,” he said, using a nickname for Netanyahu.
The reports of Tuesday's deadly violence in Lebanon came after two days of calm following a ceasefire brokered on Saturday. No Israeli airstrikes or shelling have been reported since Sunday, and Hezbollah also has not claimed any attacks in what has been the longest halt in the fighting since the latest Israel-Hezbollah war erupted on March 2.
Lebanon and Israel planned another round of direct talks in Washington on Tuesday, which are expected to focus on developing a plan for an Israeli withdrawal.
Rising reported from Bangkok and Gambrell from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Abby Sewell in Beirut, Jamey Keaten in Geneva and Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
A man walks past a welcoming billboard featuring Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian along a roadside in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)
Vehicles drives past welcoming billboards featuring Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, right, with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, center, and Shehbaz Sharif alongside an overhead bridge in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)
A man walks past a welcoming billboard featuring Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, center, with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, right, and Shehbaz Sharif along a roadside in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)
The welcoming billboard, featuring Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, right, with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, center, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, is displayed alongside of an overhead bridge, in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)
A woman walks past a welcoming billboard featuring Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian along a roadside in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)
