Former world number one, Serena Williams, has hinted that she may be ready to get back to the court once again. The veteran, who has been out of action since playing at the 2022 US Open, took to Twitter on Tuesday to announce, “I’m ready to hit some balls again.” A very vague message with no further explanation; fans have taken it to mean that she may be ready to return to tennis one more time. 

Back in August 2022, Serena announced that she was evolving away from tennis, and then a month later, after losing to Ajla Tomljanovic, there was a bit of fanfare about her dismissal, and it looked like that was her final match as she was expected to retire after. 

But Serena specifically never used the word “retire” when speaking of her future in tennis. The 42-year-old has always been deliberate about the mention of the word, and so never did announce that she was retiring. 

In her words: “I have never liked the word retirement. It doesn’t feel like a modern word to me. I’ve been thinking of this as a transition… Maybe the best word to describe what I’m up to is evolution. I’m here to tell you that I’m evolving away from tennis toward other things that are important to me.”

So, even though she has not played for over a year now, she is technically still not a retired player, which is why Tuesday’s tweet had a lot of people hopeful she could be back on the court again. 

The 23-time Grand Slam champion had, in the later part of her career, tried to get a 24th grand slam title, which is something that kept failing to happen. Even before her current absence, Serena took regular breaks from the sports and her comeback were framed around her winning a grand slam title, but she never did get that. 

At 23 grand slams, she is one title short from tying the record of Margaret Court for the most grand slam wins by a woman. She always viewed it as something to attain and, to a large extent, is the only reason why she held onto the sport for so long.