Serena Williams hints at comeback after longtime coach announces partnership with rival Simona Halep

A little more than a year ago after losing at the Australian Open, Serena Williams suggested her eventual exit from tennis could be so under the radar, we may not even notice that it happened.

“If I ever say farewell, I wouldn’t tell anyone,” she said.

Williams, the Open Era record holder with 23 Grand Slam titles, has not played since Wimbledon last June, when she tore her right hamstring during a first-round match against Aliaksandra Sasnovich. There has been notoriously little buzz about when she expects to play again, and her name has yet to pop up on the entry lists in any of the upcoming tournaments as the WTA starts its clay court swing leading up to the French Open. 

While making an appearance with other prominent athletes Thursday at a promotional event in Miami, Williams offered perhaps a hint of … something when she posted an Instagram story with Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

“We’ve been talking about my comeback and he’s been hyping me up and getting me ready for Wimbledon,” Williams said. “Can’t wait!”

Said Rodgers: “What about the U.S. Open?”

Williams: “Wimbledon’s before the U.S. Open! I have to play Wimbledon first!"

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Rodgers: “She’s baaaaaacck.”

It was interesting timing, to say the least. Earlier Thursday, Williams’ coach for the last decade, Patrick Mouratoglou, announced that he would now be working with Simona Halep, who defeated Williams in the 2019 Wimbledon final. 

Though Mouratoglou is connected to several players on both the men’s and women’s tours who train at his academy in the south of France, coaches at that level only work with one player at a time.

In explaining the linkup with Halep, Mouratoglou posted on Twitter: “She asked me if I was available to coach her. I have the highest respect for her but it was out of the question at the time. A few weeks later, I had a conversation with Serena, and the door opened for me, at least short term, to work with someone else.” 

Immediately, this announcement set the tennis world ablaze. Though the wording is obviously and intentionally vague, it suggests a few possibilities.

The first is Williams isn’t returning anytime soon, since she would almost certainly have at least a training block with Mouratoglou before playing. The second is she really does not know her future, and thus has no issue with Mouratoglou working with another player in the meantime. The third is she is on the verge of a comeback working with another coach, which frankly seems the least likely of the three, given that even the most promising version of a comeback at age 40 would not be anything that resembles a full-time return to the tour.

Williams did not immediately acknowledge the Mouratoglou news on any of her social media platforms, but the Instagram story with Rodgers — and the timing of it — seems to be at least some of type of message for her fans that she isn’t giving up on playing quite yet.

What a Williams retirement looks like, at this point, remains a fairly fascinating topic. After the birth of her daughter Olympia in 2017, Williams’ drive to keep playing has seemed primarily motivated by winning at least one more Grand Slam title to tie Margaret Court, whose numbers were largely compiled in tennis’ amateur era and thus are not truly comparable. 

But with the pandemic, her other interests and injuries, Williams just has not played very much tennis over the past two years. Her ranking has slipped into the 240s, the depth of the women’s field has grown and the notion of returning at this age and beating seven consecutive opponents in a Grand Slam draw seems far less realistic than it did even 12 months ago when the odds were getting long.

If she’s healthy, you can’t count out the idea that Williams will give it a shot at Wimbledon, where she can theoretically still serve some opponents off the court and yet still have a more satisfying ending than leaving Centre Court with a torn hamstring.

At the same time, it’s hard to imagine another appearance at Wimbledon and/or the U.S. Open being much more than a short farewell tour (albeit an unofficial one) without a full commitment to competition, which seems to be what Mouratoglou is seeking with Halep. 

Obviously we’re reading in between the lines here, but that’s all we’ve got to go on right now. If Williams is done, the disappointment of not seeing her compete again will surely be a disappointment to millions. At the same time, she has done more than enough to earn the exit of her choosing, even if it’s delivered without warning.