Wimbledon tournament director Jamie Baker has confirmed that he has flexed the rules to allow Serena Williams the chance to compete in the doubles draw. The seven-time champion made her return to SW19 on Tuesday night when she lost to Maya Joint in the singles draw.
Williams has also entered the doubles draw but a troubling knee injury has cast huge doubt on her participation. All women’s doubles first round matches are supposed to be completed on Thursday and Friday of the first week.
However, Wimbledon bosses are planning to schedule Serena and Venus Williams’ doubles tie on Saturday to allow the 44-year-old the best chance to recover.
“Obviously it is amazing to have Serena back,” Baker said. “I was on Centre Court for quite a bit on Tuesday, I thought, considering she had no practice singles matches, it was an amazing level that she put out.
“We are giving her as much time. Obviously we want her to play, if she possibly can. In terms of the days, it is a guideline. That is what we’re hoping to do to try and get the tournament finished.
“There are sometimes exceptional circumstance, whether that’s weather, injuries or actually sometimes conflicts of players playing in two of three events.
“It doesn’t happen that often but occasionally you do get the odd match that carries over and we wouldn’t do that if we felt that it was putting the competition in any kind of danger.”
The Williams sisters will have to be scheduled on a main show court – either Centre Court, Court 1 or Court 2 – because of security concerns with putting them on an outside court. However, no other first round doubles matches are usually scheduled on one of the main stages.
“Serena and Venus, they are massive global stars so there is a lot of people that want to watch them,” Baker added. “The scheduling is a balance between all the different matches that you have and the show courts at the start of the week are prioritised for the singles matches but we’ll see how it shapes up tomorrow.
“That [security] is a major consideration with scheduling. Not just with Serena and Venus but any of our singles matches that we know have got a big following. The first thing we think about is the numbers at matches and the safety.”
If Serena pulls out through injury then Venus, 46, will not be allowed to pick a new partner. They will be replaced by a lucky loser.