Serena Williams, who has not played a competitive tennis match since capturing last year’s Australian Open, will return to the court next month at a Fed Cup tie, the US Tennis Association announced yesterday.
Williams was pregnant when she won her 23rd major crown last January in Melbourne. She gave birth to a girl, Alexis Olympia, last September and married Alexis Ohanian in November.
The defending Fed Cup champion Americans will play host to the Netherlands in a first-round tie from February 10-11 on an indoor hard-court at Asheville, North Carolina.
Joining 22nd-ranked Williams on the US squad will be her sister seven-time Grand Slam champion, Venus, and ninth-ranked CoCo Vandeweghe, a semi-finalist at last year’s US and Australian Opens in her best major results.
This will be the first time in two years that either Williams sister has been on the US Fed Cup squad. The US women have never lost in eight ties when both Williams sisters have been named to the squad, the most recent of those wins in 2015.
