When Serena Williams announced she was “evolving away” from tennis back in 2022, the phrase felt carefully chosen, almost deliberately ambiguous.

Four years later, that linguistic hedging has proven prescient. The 44-year-old will step back onto Centre Court this month alongside her sister Venus, 46, after Wimbledon granted the pair a doubles wildcard for the Championships beginning June 29.

It’s a decision that probably felt inevitable the moment Serena returned to competition at Queen’s Club earlier this month, yet somehow still carries the weight of something remarkable.

The sisters have won six Wimbledon doubles titles together across three decades, their most recent in 2016. Between them, they’ve claimed 12 singles crowns at the All England Club alone.

Now, with Venus struggling in singles this season with multiple consecutive losses and Serena admitting she needs to “get to work” before considering singles competition, their wildcard entry reads less like a conquest and more like a homecoming.

“My daughter Olympia told me I should play with Venus,” Serena said recently. “She’s always right.”

A Comeback Built on Family and Legacy

The road back has been uneven. Serena’s return at Queen’s delivered a solid first-round doubles victory with 19-year-old Canadian Victoria Mboko before injury forced Mboko’s withdrawal.

Switching partners, Serena paired with Karolina Muchova in Berlin this week, only to fall 6-4, 6-4 to doubles specialists Giuliana Olmos and Erin Routliffe.

These are not the dominant performances that once defined her career, but then again, dominance doesn’t really seem to be the point anymore.

Venus, meanwhile, has continued her own unlikely persistence at age 46, amid a season that’s brought more losses than wins.

Still, she reached last year’s US Open doubles quarterfinals, a run that Serena cited as inspiration. “I think I was really motivated by what Venus was doing that year in the Open doubles,” she said. “I thought she played really well.” The elder Williams sister’s ability to compete at 46 apparently reassured Serena that something like a comeback was at least physically possible.

The decision to return follows months of deliberate ambiguity.

After Williams’s name appeared in tennis’s anti-doping testing pool last December - a requirement for any player hoping to compete - she posted on social media: “Omg yall I’m NOT coming back.”

By February, though, she’d shared a video of herself practicing serves for the first time since 2023. The cryptic posts and non-committal interviews gave way to reality when she accepted the Queen’s wildcard in June.

The Wildcard Debate and British Disappointment

Wimbledon’s wildcard selections always spark debate, and this year’s announcements haven’t broken that tradition.

Retiring veterans Stan Wawrinka and Grigor Dimitrov received men’s singles entries, as did French Open runner-up Maja Chwalinska on the women’s side.

The 24-year-old Pole will carry the unusual distinction of being both a wildcard and a seeded player, having jumped to world number 21 after her Roland Garros run.

But the most notable omission may be Dan Evans, the British former world number 21 who’s announced this will be his final tournament.

The 36-year-old didn’t receive a singles wildcard, though he’ll at least get a doubles farewell alongside Henry Searle. Evans earlier complained about being overlooked at Queen’s, saying it would have been “a classy gesture” to include him.

“I’m a professional tennis player and I wouldn’t be playing if I wasn’t prepared or ready,” he said. The snub probably stings more given that Wawrinka and Dimitrov - neither British, neither with particularly strong Wimbledon records - made the cut.

For the Williams sisters, though, the wildcard system is working exactly as intended. They changed tennis when they arrived as teenagers in the 1990s, bringing power and athleticism that blew opponents off the court.

Together they’ve won 30 Grand Slam singles titles and 14 doubles majors.

Their impact extends well beyond the trophy count: they made tennis more diverse, more athletic, more watched. Wimbledon knows this, and the tournament appears happy to bank on nostalgia and star power.