Tennis nice Venus Williams plans to play for a thirty third straight season on the WTA Tour, beginning in Auckland, New Zealand, in January.
Organizers of the ASB Basic in New Zealand stated Wednesday that Williams, 45, would function at their Jan. 5-11 occasion through a wild-card entry.
It suggests the seven-time Grand Slam singles champion is getting ready for the Australian Open later that month, a event she has twice misplaced within the ultimate and final appeared at in 2021.
Williams made her professional event debut in 1994 in Oakland, California, and has performed at the least two WTA occasions in every season since, the tour stated. She has not performed a event exterior North America since Birmingham in 2023.
She final performed in singles on the US Open in August, dropping in three units to Eleventh-seeded Karolina Muchova within the first spherical. She reached the quarterfinals in girls’s doubles at Flushing Meadows alongside Leylah Fernandez.
Ranked No. 570, Williams is 5 years older than the next-oldest-ranked gamers, Naoko Eto and Bethanie Mattek-Sands.
The Related Press and PA contributed to this report.
