Serena Williams withdrew from the doubles draw at Wimbledon on Saturday due to a knee injury.<\/p>\n
Williams had received a wild-card entry to play alongside her sister, Venus, but tweaked her knee in her first-round singles loss to Maya Joint on Tuesday. The Australian posted a 6-3, 6-7 (6), 6-3 victory over Williams, 44, who was competing in her first professional singles match in nearly four years.<\/p>\n
“I’m heartbroken to have to withdraw from doubles,” the 23-time Grand Slam winner wrote on Instagram. “Coming back to compete again has been a gift, and the opportunity to play alongside Venus once more meant the world to me. I did everything I could but unfortunately my knee just isn’t ready to compete.”<\/p>\n
Serena Williams gave a tease as to her future in her Instagram post.<\/p>\n
“All I can say is stay tuned to a city near you,” she wrote.<\/p>\n
The sisters, who won the grass-court Grand Slam doubles title six times (most recently in 2016), were slated to take on Argentina’s Solana Sierra and Colombia’s Camila Osorio at the All England Club.<\/p>\n
Tournament director Jamie Baker said the first-round doubles match was pushed back to give Serena Williams “as much time” as possible to recover. All other first-round matches in the draw were contested Thursday and Friday.<\/p>\n
Venus, 46, and Serena Williams last played doubles at the 2022 U.S. Open, losing in the first round to Linda Noskova and Lucie Hradecka of the Czech Republic.<\/p>\n
–Field Level Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Serena Williams withdrew from the doubles draw at Wimbledon on Saturday due to a knee injury. Williams had received a wild-card entry to play alongside her sister, Venus, but tweaked…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":480731,"template":"","news_cat":[4384,4383,4396,49],"class_list":["post-480730","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news_cat-news","news_cat-story","news_cat-top-story","news_cat-wta"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n