If Venus and Serena Williams want to represent the U.S. in their hometown at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games, that door appears to be open.
In an announcement of the tennis event Thursday, World Tennis, the sport’s international governing body, said that it would award six spots to players who don’t qualify either through their world ranking, or through the other metrics of qualifying unique to the Games. Four of those spots will go to the winners of continental tournaments. Two will be reserved for “former Olympic gold medalists or Grand Slam champions.”
The Williams sisters, who grew up in Compton, Calif., are both.
Serena, 44 played her first singles match in nearly four years at at Wimbledon in June, losing to Maya Joint of Australia, a rising young player, in three sets. She played two doubles matches ahead of Wimbledon and was supposed to play there with Venus, 46, but had to pull out after tweaking her knee during her match against Joint.
Both sisters are expected to play the U.S. Open later this summer, though it’s unclear in which disciplines. Serena has not yet announced any tournament appearances during the North American hard-court swing ahead of the year’s fourth Grand Slam, while Venus will appear at the D.C. Open in Washington next week, playing both singles and doubles, the latter with Alex Eala of the Philippines.
Anyone seeking a gold medal in tennis in 2028 will be racing against time. That year’s edition of Wimbledon will end July 16, two days after the LA opening ceremony. The singles event will start Thursday July 20, with 64-player draws; men’s and women’s doubles will have 32-player draws and mixed doubles 16.
Taking cues from the U.S. Open, the mixed doubles event will open the tennis competition, starting July 19 and finishing July 20. That tournament in the past had taken place near the end of the tennis competition, with entrants somewhat dependent on who made it to the latter stages of the singles event or who was willing to stick around. This format should encourage participation from top players in both singles and doubles, though maybe not the Wimbledon finalists.
The defending men’s singles champion is Serbia’s Novak Djokovic, who defeated Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz in the gold medal match in 2024; the defending women’s champion is China’s Zheng Qinwen, who defeated Croatia’s Donna Vekić. The men’s doubles champions were Australia’s Matthew Ebden and John Peers, Italy’s Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini won women’s doubles gold and the mixed doubles went to the Czech Republic’s Kateřina Siniaková and Tomáš Macháč.
The competition will take place at the USTA training complex in Carson. Calif., about 15 miles south of downtown Los Angeles. The venue will feature a 10,000-seat permanent stadium, two temporary show courts, and eight other field courts.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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