Serena Williams intends to keep playing after an injury wrecked her Wimbledon comeback (Image: Getty)
Serena Williams’ coach, Rennae Stubbs, says the 23-time Grand Slam champion is planning to continue playing despite getting injured on her return to singles at Wimbledon. The American superstar, 44, returned from retirement in doubles last month at Queen’s. She then played her first singles match in almost four years on Centre Court, losing to Aussie star Maya Joint in three sets.
Williams was also expected to team up with her sister, Venus, in doubles. But it later emerged that she had tweaked her knee during the first set, and she was ultimately forced to withdraw from the women’s doubles event. Stubbs has now revealed that the former world No. 1 thought she would have won had it not been for the knee injury. But she’s hinted that Williams wants to keep going into the North American hard court swing, and could even play a warm-up event before the US Open.
“She went in having no problems with that knee. So, it happens, and she felt it as she had already talked about in the first set, and it flared up big, big time after the match. She was in a lot of pain. Hence the no press. Sorry for everybody that probably waited to hear from her, but she was in a lot of pain,” Stubbs, herself a former doubles No. 1, said on Tuesday.
“So getting her out of here as quickly as we could, in that amount of pain, was pretty clear. And then it settles down, hopefully, in the next little period of time, and her thoughts are to try and keep going. But, again, this is all up to her. We assess everything that she wants to do now, and based on what she wants to do, and she’s got a lot of things to consider, her family, her businesses, but her goal is to keep going.”
Williams “evolved away” from professional tennis at the 2022 US Open. But she sensationally returned from retirement last month at the Queen’s Club, winning a doubles match alongside Victoria Mboko before the young Canadian got injured and they had to withdraw. The 44-year-old then lost a first-round doubles match with Karolina Muchova in Berlin.
They were the only matches she played before returning to singles competition in SW19. And Stubbs believes the 23-time Major winner will try and do things differently moving forward.
The Aussie tennis coach and pundit added: “Again, it’s completely up to her and physically how she’s feeling, and we know that the knee has to settle down and has to get to a point where she can get back onto the practice court, back into the gym, back into all doing what she needs to do.
Rennae Stubbs says Serena Williams could play warm-up events before the US Open (Image: Getty)
“I’ll leave it to her to discuss her medical stuff and how she’s feeling, but I know that for her, trying to play certainly something before the US Open will be something she would like to do. She doesn’t want to go and do what she did here, which is just play singles at the US Open. But at the same time, it’s going to depend on physically how she’s doing.”
While Williams had no singles matches under her belt before losing to world No. 87 Gauff, she still got in some good practice sessions and was left with some regrets after the knee issue hampered her against Joint. “You know, she did whisper to me, I would have won if I had a good knee!” Stubbs said.
“Look, I can tell you, leading up to the tournament, she was playing practice sets against players. She was beating players that are still in the tournament, in practice. I won’t mention which ones, because I don’t want to embarrass them. But, you know, she was playing well. And so, I think she would not do it if she didn’t think that she could compete or be competitive. I mean, this is the greatest female tennis player of all time. So, you’re not gonna go out and want to embarrass yourself. And she didn’t. She competed really well.”
Should Williams recover in time to play the US hard court swing, her coach thinks she could do even better. “Serena hits the ball as well as anybody still in the world. I mean, if you had seen one thing about what we witnessed out there is how well she can still serve, how well she can still hit the ball,” the Australian explained.
“Once she gets on the hard court, one thing about the hard court is, she’s going to have better stability, right? For every single player, playing a first match on grass, especially when it’s early days in the tournament. It’s slippery. And so, you’re always concerned. Look at what happened to Vicky in Queen’s. So getting on the hard court will be a lot more sort of stable for her, and we all know how well she plays on hard court, so it’s just a matter of getting her body back into the shape she wants, and then we’ll see.”
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