Serena Williams will make her comeback at Wimbledon, she announced with an Instagram post Tuesday morning.
In the post, Williams is wearing white sneakers on grass and has tagged both Wimbledon and Eastbourne, which will host a WTA event the week before Wimbledon. Wimbledon begins on June 27.
The tennis star captioned the post: “SW and SW19. It’s a date. 2022, see you there.” Wimbledon is often called SW19 in reference to the postcode for the All England Tennis Club.
Williams, who has won the singles tournament at Wimbledon seven times, has not played since last year’s tournament, in which she injured her leg in the first round.
While she could have entered this year’s event using a protected ranking due to her injury , she did not do so and was absent from the grass court Grand Slam’s initial entry list. Instead, she’ll enter the tournament as a wild card.
Wimbledon later confirmed that Williams received a wild-card invitation and will appear in the tournament for the 21st time in her career.
The stage awaits.
— Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) June 14, 2022
Our 7-time champion @serenawilliams will return to Wimbledon as a wild card this summer for her 21st appearance pic.twitter.com/7ddMAv7mOq
Back in April, the 23-time Grand Slam winner teased at a Wimbledon comeback via Instagram. While backstage at a Bitcoin conference, she revealed that she and NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers had “been talking about my comeback.”
“He’s been hyping me up and getting me ready for Wimbledon,” she says in the video.
While Rogers pushes back with the U.S. Open, Williams said, “I’ve got to play Wimbledon first!”
Williams was the runner-up at Wimbledon in 2018 and 2019.
The video with Rodgers came on the same day that Williams’ longtime coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, announced he would be working full-time with Simona Halep, who won the tournament in 2019. At the time, he said that conversations with Serena opened up the door “for me…to work with someone else.”
