“I’m still not even sure”: Serena Williams on the comeback she nearly talked herself out of
Confirming her singles entry with a day to spare, a candid Serena Williams admits she is still unsure about her Wimbledon comeback as she prepares to face 20-year-old Maya Joint, four years after her last singles match.
Serena Williams, Wimbledon 2026 | © Imago / PsNewz
Serena Williams is back as a singles player at Wimbledon, and barely 48 hours from her return she has still not fully made peace with the choice. The seven-time champion, 44, cut the decision as fine as it goes: she had until Monday to confirm her entry, and waited almost to the buzzer. “I think it was like Sunday,” she said when asked when she had decided she was ready, the deadline a day off. “I just wasn’t sure.” Then came the admission that framed the whole afternoon. “Honestly, I’m still not even sure,” she said, and laughed, sitting through her media day at the tournament she has owned more than any active player.
It is the most candid admission of a comeback that has moved fast since she first reappeared in doubles at Queen’s Club and Berlin. The walk back through the gates, she said, did not undo her the way the public expected. “I can’t say I had a lot of emotions,” she said, explaining that the weeks already spent on grass had taken the shock out of it. “It was kind of like riding a bike. I didn’t feel a ton of stuff yet.”
The reckoning, she suspected, was being deferred rather than avoided. “When I play, I might have a lot of things come up.”
What she does not do, she made clear, is dwell on what she built here. “I don’t really look too much in the past at what I’ve done,” she said. “You would never know that I was a professional athlete if you spent a day with me at home.” The trophies exist but are kept out of the way. “Not hidden, but in a room that’s not crazy visible.” The memories that have surfaced lately have been narrow and particular. “Mostly Olympic memories, I don’t know why.”
Serena: “Who knows if I’ll ever make it here again – this could be it”
She was asked, more than once, why she had reached for singles at all rather than staying in the safer company of doubles. The answer came wrapped in self-interrogation. “Not every day Wimbledon calls a wild card for someone,” she said. “I happen to be one of those people, and I thought, ‘well, I should really take this opportunity. Who knows if I’ll ever make it here again – this could be it.'”
Even talking herself into it carried an argument with herself. “What’s wrong with me? Are you nuts? You really should do this.”
The framing she keeps returning to is opportunity over legacy. “People live to be an athlete, and I have this great opportunity to showcase what I do best,” she said. The disbelief, though, sits close to the surface. “I never thought I’d be sitting here in front of this,” she said. “I never thought I would do this again.”
Serena knows Joint, Joint knows Serena
On Tuesday she faces Maya Joint, the 20-year-old Australian ranked No. 53, in a first-round meeting between players who have never shared a court – and who were barely a generation apart in the sport. Williams was unfazed by the unfamiliarity. “Actually, I know her,” she said. “I’ve watched some of her videos, and I’m sure she knows my game.”
If anything, the inexperience runs the other way, and the field knows it. Told that Mirra Andreeva, the Roland-Garros winner, had watched the draw through her fingers, hoping to avoid her, Williams took it as a compliment rather than a verdict. “Respectfully, it’s not surprising,” she said, likening herself to one of the returning greats nobody wants early.
I expect to be nervous. I was nervous every single match I’ve ever played in my life.
“No one would want to play them in their first round. I can’t think of anyone who would want to do that.” The unknown, she added, is her advantage. “No one knows how my game may or may not even evolve, what to expect. Those types of opponents are always very difficult to play.”
What has not changed is the feeling she expects to carry onto Centre Court. “I expect to be nervous,” she said. “I was nervous every single match I’ve ever played in my life.” She has long read those nerves as proof of investment rather than weakness. “That showed the passion and the love and the care,” she said. “Then I just dust them off and move on.”
For all the hedging, the return rests on something simpler than certainty, and she offered it almost as a note to herself. “You just have to believe in yourself and go for any dream, no matter how wild it may be.”
