“Unprofessionnal, I hate it” – Serena Williams says anti-doping whereabouts rules nearly stopped her comeback
Williams called the whereabouts testing system “unprofessional” and said it nearly kept her from returning – a rare on-record swipe at anti-doping from one of its most-tested athletes. The agency in charge has corrected her, showing that the 23-time Grand Slam champion had blurred several separate rules into one misunderstanding.
Serena Williams, Wimbledon 2026 | © Imago / PsNewz
Serena Williams said the anti-doping whereabouts system was one of the main reasons she almost did not return to tennis, calling the testing protocol “unprofessional” while accepting it was necessary.
Speaking to reporters on media day before her first Grand Slam appearance in four years, the American said re-entering the testing pool – which she first did last October, the moment that alerted many to a possible return – had been one of the hardest parts of coming back. “That was a big reason why I didn’t want to come back either, because it’s just so hard,” she said. “My life is busy. I run a company, I run a VC company, I travel the world.”
If you miss a test outside of your window it still counts as a missed test, so I guess I can’t go pick up my kids
Williams was critical of how missed tests are recorded. “If you miss a test outside of your window it still counts as a missed test, so I guess I can’t go pick up my kids,” she said, characterising a rule she said she had only recently learned. “It’s unprofessional, I hate it. I think it’s necessary but a lot of this stuff – if I want to go places outside of my window I should be able to go without having to count as a missed test.”
She said the difficulty was less about the principle than the routine. “Obviously I don’t mind, because I’ve always been very clear about what I do,” she said. “But just getting in that routine of, first of all learning the new rules, and then just reporting every day, where I’m going to be for 24 hours – it’s just different. At least for me.” She added that there had to be “a different way to make it reasonable.”
Itia : “it is not considered a strike”
Reading Serena Williams’s comments, the ITIA (International Tennis Integrity Agency) corrected the 23-time Grand Slam champion on a key point, in a statement sent to Tennis Majors. “Following Serena’s comments, it is worth clarifying the Whereabouts rules,” the agency said. “If a tester is unable to reach a player during their allocated hour, then it may well be a ‘strike’, and three failures could lead to a charge. If a tester is unable to reach a player outside of their allocated hour, it is not considered a strike.”
What Williams appeared to do was treat two different obligations as one. The system has two layers. The first is the 60-minute slot: each day a player declares one hour and one location where they will be present and available, and missing that – a tester attends, the player isn’t there – is a “missed test.”
The second runs the rest of the time: a player must keep accurate, complete whereabouts information on file, and can be tested at any hour, not only during the declared slot. Falling short there is a “filing failure.” Under the 2026 Tennis Anti-Doping Programme, a player must “advise the ITIA of their whereabouts on a quarterly basis” and keep it current, and a charge follows only from “any combination of three Missed Tests and/or Filing Failures within a 12-month period.”
We understand the system can seem challenging, but it is there to protect players, not to trip them up.
Stepping out at other times, as Williams described with collecting her children, does not produce a missed test, provided her filing is accurate. She spoke as though any absence could count against her; in fact only a failure inside her declared hour is a missed test, and only a defective filing is the other kind of strike.
“There have been no changes to the Whereabouts rules in the last few years,” the ITIA said, framing the system as protective rather than punitive. “We understand the system can seem challenging, but it is there to protect players, not to trip them up. If players are unsure or have questions, we would welcome a conversation with them directly or through their agents.”
The Vondrosouva case
The clarification carries extra charge after the system produced its most dramatic sanction in years. The ITIA has just banned 2023 Wimbledon champion Markéta Vondroušová for four years after she refused an out-of-competition test at her home at around 8pm on 3 December 2025, outside the hour she had nominated. A doping control officer reached her, she declined to give a sample and signed a refusal form.
The timing is the part that resonates with Williams’s misreading: being absent outside your slot carries no penalty, but being found and refusing does.
Vondroušová is appealing. She called the late-night visit “a serious intrusion into [her] privacy,” and her defence – that the agent rang her door late at night, frightening her, with the 2016 home-invasion stabbing of compatriot Petra Kvitová in mind – was rejected at first instance as offering no compelling justification.
Williams is far from the first to find the procedure abusive. The whereabouts obligation has drawn sustained complaint, and the discontent has hardened into action: the Professional Tennis Players Association, co-founded by Novak Djokovic, has brought legal action against the sport’s governing bodies that takes in anti-doping among its grievances. Players such as Jenson Brooksby and Mikael Ymer have served bans of around 18 months precisely for missing three tests within a 12-month period – the very mechanism at the heart of her confusion. But still, she hates it.
