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The Williams sisters reunion will have to wait.
Serena and Venus Williams withdrew from Wimbledon doubles competition Saturday due a knee injury Serena sustained during her singles match Tuesday against Maya Joint.
Williams posted a video of her walking gingerly and photos of several syringes of fluid removed from her knee on Instagram on Saturday morning
“Coming back to compete again has been a gift, and the opportunity to play alongside [Venus] once more meant the world to me,” she wrote. “I did everything I could to be ready, but unfortunately my knee just isn’t ready to compete.”
On Tuesday, Serena fell in three sets to Joint, 20, in the first round of the women’s singles competition, though Serena received mass support from the crowd at Centre Court.
After the match, she did not participate in mandatory media availability, instead issuing a statement saying she was “really glad to be back at Wimbledon.” The next day, Serena’s agent Jill Smoller released a statement saying Serena “tweaked her right knee at the end of the first set,” and was excused from her media obligations by Wimbledon officials.
The pair—which won six Wimbledon doubles titles together from 2000 to 2016—received a Wimbledon doubles wild-card entry and were set to compete as a team for the first time since the 2022 US Open.
The match was supposed to be the first time that Serena, 44, and Venus, 45, teamed together since the 2022 US Open, which was also the last tournament Serena played in singles. Serena said then that she was “evolving away” from the sport.
Serena made her official return last month, playing in a pair of doubles matches in tune-up tournaments leading up to Wimbledon. But she made her singles return after nearly four years at Wimbledon, receiving a wildcard entry late last week that was widely believed to be left vacant for her.
It’s not clear when Serena will compete again, though the WTA calendar moves to its North American leg later this month. The US Open starts in late August, but there are a few warm-up tournaments before that she could participate in including the National Bank Open in Montreal, DC Open, Cincinnati Open, and the returning Memphis Classic.
On Thursday, the National Bank Open, which starts July 31, announced it had granted Venus a singles wild-card entry.
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