Andrew Rizzo The G.O.A.T. is back. Serena Williams, almost four years removed from her last professional tennis match, will play at the Queen’s Club Championships next week, one of the oldest and most prestigious grass-court tournaments in the world.
Serena and Nike confirmed the news on IG with a teaser reel (embedded below). The 23-time Grand Slam winner will play doubles with Victoria Mboko, a 19-year-old rising star out of Canada. The comeback follows months of speculation that Serena had consistently shut down. It’s worth noting that she never formally retired, instead saying she was “evolving away” from the game following her most recent match.
Beyond the seismic news this represents for tennis, we’re immediately thinking about how Nike might choose to mark the occasion. Serena is one of the longest-tenured Nike athletes of all time, having signed her first major deal at 21 back in 2003. Nike leveled up the relationship in 2019 with the Serena Williams Design Crew, an ongoing initiative built around apprenticeship programs and promoting diversity in sportswear design. The clearest symbol of her place in the Nike fabric, though, is her building at Nike World Headquarters, one of just a few to carry that honor alongside names like Michael Jordan, LeBron James, and Tiger Woods.
With a return four years in the making, we’re betting Nike has something special lined up, whether that’s more ads, product, or both. Needless to say, we’ll be tracking this story closely as the Queen’s Club Championships begin on June 8th.
