Serena Williams\u2019 legendary former coach Rick Macci has told Tennis365 he believes the tennis icon can \u201cbeat anybody\u201d when she makes her stunning Wimbledon comeback.<\/p>\n
Williams, who played her last singles match at the 2022 US Open, won the last of her 23 Grand Slam singles titles \u2014 an Open Era women\u2019s record \u2014 at the 2017 Australian Open.<\/p>\n
The 44-year-old American made her comeback earlier this month in doubles at the Queen\u2019s Club Championships, where she and Victoria Mboko won a match before her partner was forced to withdraw ahead of the second round. Williams then lost in the opening round of the Berlin Open doubles event with Karolina Muchova last week.<\/p>\n
The former world No 1 will make her singles return at Wimbledon<\/a> next week, having received a main draw wildcard for the grass-court major, which she has won seven times. She will also partner her sister, Venus Williams, in the women\u2019s doubles event.<\/p>\n Macci began coaching Williams in 1991, when she was 10 years old, and worked with her until 1995, while he also coached Venus Williams during the same period.<\/p>\n In an exclusive interview with Tennis365, Macci revealed his reaction when he found out Williams<\/a>\u00a0was coming back.<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t surprised,\u201d said Macci. \u201cFour years ago, when she unplugged and retired at the US Open, I still thought there was a lot left in the tank, and I still thought she was gonna play doubles with Venus.<\/p>\n Serena Williams is doing something ahead of Wimbledon which she has rarely done before in her career<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Wimbledon 2026 Draw Date, Prize Money: Sinner, Sabalenka headline. Big-name absentees, Eala and Raducanu seeded<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Want more from Tennis365? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a> for tennis coverage you can trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIf you rewind the tape, she never really closed the door\u2026 a [she had] lot of things going on in her life, had another child, had a lot of other interests.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere we\u2019re at today, it doesn\u2019t surprise me. I said it four months ago: \u2018not only is she gonna play doubles, and I think it\u2019s gonna happen at Wimbledon, I think she\u2019ll play singles.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cListen, she\u2019s all in, she\u2019s been working hard, she\u2019s been training. This isn\u2019t a cameo. This isn\u2019t for any other reason than she loves to compete. It\u2019s still in her blood.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s must-see TV, and I think all the ratings for tennis are gonna go through the roof.\u201d<\/p>\n Macci explained why grass is the surface on which Williams is the most dangerous, while he identified recovery between matches as the biggest challenge for her.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s doing it the right way by playing doubles to get used to the grass,\u201d Macci assessed.<\/p>\n \u201cListen, she used to play two hours on grass back when she was a kid. She has the big serve, the clean groundstrokes, brutal return of serve.<\/p>\n \u201cDoubles, you\u2019re only covering half the court, so she stepped in for a little tune-up with the doubles, but 100%, singles was on the horizon.<\/p>\n \u201cGrass is probably her best surface, simply because she can hurt people easier, and the points are quicker, shorter. And the other way around, they\u2019re playing Serena Williams on the other side of the net.<\/p>\n \u201cSo nothing would surprise me if she did go and beat people. Is she gonna win the tournament? No.<\/p>\n \u201cBut can she do damage and beat anybody? I\u2019m telling you, she can beat anybody on the tour, because when you\u2019re nervous\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest thing is gonna be this, when she plays, and if she wins: the next day, and then the next day. It\u2019s gonna be the recovery and the physicality.<\/p>\n \u201cBut to go in and compete, and be all in, this is what she wants to do. And her kids are a little older, she wants to have them watch her play a little more.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I think it\u2019s great for tennis and it\u2019s great for everybody, because people like a comeback, people are very curious.\u201d<\/p>\n As well as the Williams sisters, Macci trained Jennifer Capriati, Maria Sharapova and Andy Roddick, who all went on to become world No 1 and win Grand Slam titles \u2014 as well as future major champions Mary Pierce, Anastasia Myskina and Sofia Kenin.<\/p>\n READ NEXT: Serena Williams\u2019 former trainer details the key factor which could derail her Wimbledon hopes<\/a> The post \u2018Serena Williams can do damage and beat anybody at Wimbledon\u2019, warns her legendary ex-coach<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Serena Williams\u2019 legendary former coach Rick Macci has told Tennis365 he believes the tennis icon can \u201cbeat anybody\u201d when she makes her stunning Wimbledon comeback. Williams, who played her last singles match at the 2022 US Open, won the last of her 23 Grand Slam singles titles \u2014 an Open Era women\u2019s record \u2014 at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}More Tennis News<\/h2>\n
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