Serena Williams’s Wimbledon return ends in first-round defeat after four-year absence

When Serena Williams was knocked out in the first round here four years ago aged 40 she was asked whether that might be it for her at Wimbledon. “Who knows?” she said. “Who knows where I’ll pop up.”

She popped up back on Centre Court 1,396 days later, aged 44, for what she called a “retransition”. Across the net was an opponent, Maya Joint, 24 years her junior. Youth triumphed over greatness, with Joint wining in three sets that finished at nearly 10pm.

Doubling back on a career of 23 Grand Slam singles titles and seven Wimbledon singles crowns, Williams was ushered straight back to the most imposing arena in tennis to serve up Britain’s prime-time evening show.

One of those people in world sport who don’t need a surname to identify them – “Serena” will do – Williams was probably the most illustrious wild card holder in Wimbledon history. She hoped her comeback to singles action after four years out would be “like riding a bike”. But this bike had a mind of its own and dumped her on the grass.

As early as the first set, strains showed themselves. The spirit and some of the old power showed up on time but the agility, fluency and precision of old were harder to recall. Williams tried to spur herself with exclamations but lost the first set 6-3. She fought back to win the second but leaked energy all the way through the third.

There isn’t a champion alive who wouldn’t doubt their chance of reclaiming their old supremacy at 44 years old. The clue to Williams’s own uncertainty had been her accepting Wimbledon’s wildcard offer only as the deadline loomed.

“I was like, what’s wrong with you, Serena?” she said on the eve of the championships. “What are you thinking? Are you nuts? Like you really should do this.”

The “why not” is accentuated in those thoughts. The “why” is harder to pin down. Some ex-champions slam the book shut. Most pine in retirement for the structure, the camaraderie, the adoration and the thrill.

Williams didn’t step into a void. She is a founder and investor in the Women’s Soccer League (NSWL) and has a varied business and cultural life. She has two daughters, Olympia and Adira and is a paid ambassador for Ro, a “teleheath” company that helped her with weight-loss drugs and which counts her husband Alexis Ohanian as an investor. She hasn’t plugged that connection here.

In no sense is she a boxer pushing herself back through the ropes to pay some tax bill. Whatever the unquantifiable urge that drove her to take this gamble, the Wimbledon crowd weren’t about to tell her to turn back at the gates. Novak Djokovic called her return “inspirational and epic”.

At 7.26pm she emerged on to Centre Court wearing noise cancelling headphones and pretty much ignored an audience savouring we-were-there boasting rights. What a pro. Williams wasn’t here to make herself the object of nostalgic adulation. She took to the job like any other Wimbledon contender.

“You would never know I was a professional athlete if you spent a day with me at home,” she said this week. “My trophies are not hidden, but they’re in a room that’s not crazy visible.”

To the BBC, before Joint set out to break a run of 13 defeats in 14 matches, Williams said: “It’s nothing too new, and at the same time it’s everything new.” Sports science is extending pro careers beyond their old cut-off points but in elite tennis 44 is a museum age.

Equally longevity has been a foundation of her story. Her first major victory was in another century, in 1999, when she beat Martina Hingis in the US Open final – seven years before Maya Joint was born. At 35 years and 230 days Williams became the oldest world No 1 in history.

To be prolific in major championships from 1999-2017 or 18 years is a mark of immortality that will easily survive whatever happens at these championships. She entered the doubles at this year’s Queen’s with Victoria Mboko and is reunited with her sister Venus here in that discipline.

Her “final” Wimbledon appearance had been losing to 24-year-old Harmony Tan in 2022. The former men’s US, Australian and French Open champion Mats Wilander said of Williams back then: “The intimidation factor I don’t think is there any more.”

That tombstone judgment seemed apposite when Williams walked away two months later after the 2022 US Open. Joint wasn’t intimidated by her either but was battling primarily against her own inexperience. In the context of four years out Williams played with remarkable vigour but every good young player will fancy their chances of boosting their profile against her.

However understated her return, she knows how movies work. “I just think you have to believe in yourself and go for any dream, no matter how wild it may be,” she said, before exposing herself to the scrutiny of a crowd that wanted to see her conquer time, and so lend weight to their hopes of turning back the clock in their own lives – or at least stalling it for as long as they can.

Photograph by Henry Nicholls/AFP