It seems there’s a chance that Williams, currently ranked 1,151, might just keep playing indefinitely. On the other side, Svetlana Kuznetsova, the former US Open and French Open champion, hasn’t set foot on the tennis court since Wimbledon 2021. Yet, she hasn’t formally announced her retirement either.
Interestingly, Venus’s sister, Serena, shunned the term ‘retirement.’ Instead, she preferred to say she’s “evolving away from the sport,” a phrase she used around September 2022. However, Serena does appear on the International Tennis Integrity Agency’s list of retired players.
Being on that list is a significant step toward retirement because any player who wants to come out of retirement has to go through six months of drug testing before making a comeback. As for Venus, she could still be subject to a surprise visit from drug testers. However, she’s been cleared of the obligation to report her daily whereabouts since she was dropped from the international registered testing pool last June, a standard protocol for players who fall outside the world’s top 100.
This year, Williams hasn’t participated enough to qualify even as an associate member of the WTA Tour, and she hasn’t filed a WTA retirement form either. Should she decide to compete again, she’d need to complete an annual player form and pay a $250 administration fee—a relatively small sum compared to the nearly $43 million she’s earned in prize money.
Her management team hasn’t disclosed any information about her future plans, keeping us all in suspense. Whatever ideas she might have for this summer remain unspoken within the tennis community.
Over the years, many have prepared retirement tributes for her, some of which were inked quite some time ago. They might need some revisions, though.
