Serena Williams keeps on commenting half-jokingly about how “it’s summer” and “the kids aren’t in school” as the reasoning for her tennis comeback at age 44.
Turns out family might really be the biggest factor behind Williams’ decision to return to the pro game after nearly four years away.
Her two daughters, eight-year-old Olympia and Adira, who is almost three, have been with her every step of the way as she played two doubles warmup matches before
accepting wild card invitations to both the singles and doubles (with older sister Venus) competitions at Wimbledon, which starts Monday.
“Just finished a mean game of duck duck goose,” Williams said on X shortly after her singles wild card was announced last weekend.
A big hint about Williams’ return came when she posted a video of a training session last month with Adira on court helping with a resistance band.
“Rumor has it…I got a new trainer,” Williams said in her Instagram caption.
Christopher Eubanks, a recently retired pro turned Tennis Channel commentator, saw up close how Williams interacted with her family at her first tournament back at Queen’s Club, where he performed an on-court interview with the American great and doubles partner Victoria Mboko.
“There’s no changes to her legacy that will come as a result of this return. I don’t see anyone changing their mind about where Serena Williams stands all-time,” Eubanks told The Associated Press on Thursday of the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion.
“This is about more than just records. At this point, it’s more about family," said Eubanks, who will be working for ESPN at Wimbledon. "Not just playing in front of her daughters, but having her daughters sit there and watch her train every day and have to wake up and put in the long, hard yards and doing fitness and doing treatment. For her daughters to have to watch her be super disciplined, that has to be just as much of a factor."
When Williams last played in singles at the 2022 U.S. Open, Olympia had just turned five and Adira wasn’t even born yet.
“They will forever know (Williams) as, ‘Oh, you know, mommy is the GOAT of tennis,’" Eubanks said, using the acronym for “greatest of all time.”
"But then if they have memories of being able to actually watch her go through that training, to me, that feels like what this is about more than anything else,” Eubanks added.
He seems to be on to something, because the daughters did not seem overly enthusiastic about her match at Queen’s.
“Adira wanted to go to the toy store, and Olympia wanted to know what was for dinner,” Williams said.
Eubanks had a court-side seat for Williams’ match with Mboko and felt like her ball striking was “as good as it’s ever looked.”
He was also “really impressed with her serve."
“A lot of times that can be a very difficult thing to get back after having an extended time off and her serve looked great,” Eubanks said. “She had one serve up near 120 mph. And the purity with which the ball comes off of her strings off the ground on both the forehand and the backhand side looks as dialed in as I’ve seen.”
The biggest challenge for Williams in singles will likely be her fitness and movement, which on grass is more nuanced than on other surfaces.
“The hardest part for me I always felt was the decelerating and the stopping because you have to take extra steps in order to come to a stop,” said Eubanks, who reached the Wimbledon quarterfinals in 2023 and a career-high ranking of No. 29 that year.
Williams won the last of her seven Wimbledon singles titles a decade ago
“Whereas on a hard court you can kind of plant your foot, you can slide, you can decelerate a lot easier," Eubanks said. "But on the grass it takes a lot more steps and a lot more pounding on the body before you can change direction. So that’s going to be the biggest thing to watch: Her ability to decelerate and stop out of the corners in order to change direction.”
Williams might come forward to the net more and attempt to end points more quickly than she used to — kind of how Novak Djokovic has used his volleying skills more in recent years.
“That would be," Eubanks said, “what I would expect to see.”
Eubanks is only 30 and the Williams sisters were role models for him as a kid.
“They were always kind of the guiding light,” he said. “They’ve been a huge influence on me personally.”
Before last month's French Open, Eubanks was invited to a dinner for Black players hosted by Naomi Osaka and Taylor Townsend.
Coco Gauff, retiring Frenchman Gael Monfils and doubles specialist Asia Muhammad also attended.
The Williams sisters and their father, Richard Williams, were a big conversation topic.
“Everybody in that room, at some point their parents were heavily involved in their tennis,” Eubanks said. “Our parents all mentioned Richard Williams and the Williams sisters and how they did it and everyone kind of bonding over, ‘Man, Richard Williams, his name went all over the world.’”
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AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis
