For two long weeks, since her return to the courts of a professional tennis tournament at the Queen’s Club, a clock was ticking in Serena Williams’s mind. She had already committed to making her comeback in doubles at 44 after four years away from the sport, but doubles only requires a player to cover half a court with the help of a partner. The real question was whether she would dare to put herself on the line again in singles against the best tennis players in the world.

Williams’s decision to supercharge her comeback by taking a singles wildcard into Wimbledon, it turned out, was exactly as last minute as it appeared. She was only announced as the final wildcard for the women’s singles draw on Sunday 21 June, one day before the qualifying draw was made: “I had until Monday to decide. I think it was like Sunday. I just wasn’t sure up until then. Honestly, I’m still not even sure, but we’ll see,” Williams says, smiling, in her pre‑tournament press conference.

Whether or not she gains clarity in her decision by the time she steps on to the court, there is no going back. Williams, a 14-time Wimbledon champion across the women’s singles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles competitions, and a two-time Olympic gold medallist on these grounds during London 2012, will return to Centre Court on Tuesday afternoon to face Australia’s Maya Joint in her first singles match since “evolving away” from competitive play following her exit from the 2022 US Open.

As she worked hard on the court to get her singles game up to speed and pondered making her return at Wimbledon with no singles warm-up tournament, Williams realised she simply could not miss the opportunity: “It’s not every day Wimbledon holds a wildcard for someone,” she says. “I can name probably a handful of people. I happened to be one of those people. I thought: ‘I should really take this opportunity.’ Who knows if I’ll ever make it here again? This could be it.

“I was like: ‘What’s wrong with me, Serena? What are you thinking? Are you nuts?’ Like: ‘You really should do this.’ People live to be an athlete. I have this great opportunity to showcase what I do, what I do best, I suppose. I think ultimately I was like: ‘That is pretty cool, so I should do it.’”

At 20, Joint is nearly 25 years Williams’s junior and she is also 40 years younger than Williams’s oldest ever opponent, the 1966‑born Larisa Savchenko. As an unseeded player, Williams could have been drawn against anyone, including first and second seeds Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina, but she has received a reasonable first-round draw in Joint. While the Australian is one of the more talented young players on the tour, a champion on grass at Eastbourne last year, she has been stuck in a sophomore slump this year, losing 13 of her past 14 matches.

It is not even clear if Williams herself truly knows what is motivating her to return, but she is keeping her expectations low. Rather than misguidedly describing her comeback as an attempt at winning her 24th grand slam title, Williams says this is an opportunity to truly enjoy her time as a professional tennis player, something that wasn’t as possible when she put herself under so much pressure to rack up major titles: “My feelings will be different,” she says.

“My expectations are definitely different for the first time in my career. My feelings are just – not that I never enjoyed it before, or else I wouldn’t be here today – but I feel like I’m really going to enjoy being out there.”

During her years away from competitive play, Williams happily watched tennis and followed the development of younger players. She names Sabalenka, Coco Gauff and Mirra Andreeva as competitors she has particularly enjoyed following. It was Andreeva who, during her own press conference, comically explained how nervous she was about the prospect of drawing Williams in the opening round. Williams views this as a sign that potential opponents fear her: “It’s like the big four coming back. I mean, Novak [Djokovic] is still here, but no one would want to play them in their first round. I can’t think of anyone that would want to do that.

“I just think that’s an immense amount of respect, which is yet another reason why I love her [Andreeva]. Also just natural feelings. Especially at a grand slam, you want to warm up, you want to play someone. No one knows how my game may or may not have evolved, what to expect, don’t know much. Those types of opponents are always very difficult to play.”

Williams has spent the past week toiling through practice sets with far more players than she ever has done as she tries to be as ready as possible for competition. The effort she is putting into this comeback has not been lost on some of her fellow players: “I see her in the gym more than I have, I think, seen her when she was at her prime,” said Novak Djokovic. “It tells me that she really wants this to work out the best way possible. It’s admirable, honestly, the effort she’s putting in.”

For Williams, her uncertainty about returning extended even to the prospect of being back in press conferences, but she is here to put herself on the line again and see how the chips fall: “I never thought I’d be back here sitting in front of this. We all know how I feel about this. So I never thought I would do this again,” she says. “All the above. When I evolved [from tennis], I had never thought I’d come back.”