Serena Williams wins in her tennis return with doubles victory at HSBC Championships

Serena Williams has returned to the professional tennis court, and in victorious fashion.

>She teamed with Victorio Mboko for a doubles match in the first round of the HSBC Championships. Williams and Mboko played against the 3-seed pairing of Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Erin Routliffe and won in straight sets.

>Mboko started the match serving, putting Williams in the front position. After dropping the first two points of the first game, Williams and Mboko stormed back, winning four straight points to take the initial lead in the first set.

Williams and Mboko then broke Melichar-Martinez and Routliffe in the second game, which gave Serena her first service of the match. She faulted on her first serve, but then her second serve landed in play, and she won a volley, which led to an unforced error by her opponents and gave her team the point.

>Mboko and Williams won Williams' serve to take a 3-0 lead in the first set. Melichar-Martinez and Routliffe showed why they were the 3-seed and battled back to a 4-3 deficit in the first set after breaking Williams.

>After Melichar-Martinez and Routliffe tied the set 4-4, Williams hit a beautiful winner that showed she still has plenty left in the tank to put her team up 5-4.

The first set was then tied 5-5, bringing up Williams' third serve. Mboko and Williams won a close game to take the set to 6-5, giving them a chance to win the first set if they could break their opponents.

>Melichar-Martinez and Routliffe held strong to force a tiebreak. Williams and Mboko played well in the tiebreaker, winning the first set 7-6 (7-2).

>Mboko and Williams continued that momentum into the second set. The duo was up 5-2, and poetically, Williams was serving for the match win. The veteran showed off her stuff with back-to-back aces to move the game to 40-15 and bring up two match points. She needed only one, as Williams and Mboko won the second set 6-2 and advanced.

>Williams had been away from professional tennis for 3 years, 9 months and 6 days before returning on Tuesday. She had last played at the 2022 U.S. Open. Williams lost in the third round to Ajla Tomljanović 7-5, 7-6 (7-4), 6-1.

>In her time away from the court, she had her second child, Adira, in August 2023. Williams and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, now have two daughters. Alexia Olympia Ohanian Jr. was born in 2017, with her younger sister, Adira River Ohanian, coming six years later in 2023.

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style="background-color: #F4F4F4; height: 14px; width: 144px;">The veteran tennis player spoke about returning at the HSBC Championships.

"Queen's Club feels like the perfect place to begin this next chapter

>Grass has given me some of the most meaningful moments of my career, and I'm excited to be back competing on one of the sport's most iconic stages."

She expanded on her reasoning, noting that one of her main motivators is her kids.

"It's really about my kids getting to see me play. Olympia is a little bit older, Adira is very young. But it's also having an opportunity to still be able to possibly do that, one last time, is kind of cool and exciting"

Williams is 44-years-old. She is no stranger to playing doubles tennis, as she had a highly successful run teaming with her sister, Venus, from 1999 to 2016. The sisters reached 14 major doubles finals and won every final they entered.

>The Williams sisters won four Australian Opens, six Wimbledons, two U.S. Opens and two French Opens together.

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>Now that she has made her return to professional tennis, the question becomes whether or not she will try to play doubles at Wimbledon at the end of June.

>Before that, though, Williams and Mboko will play their next match in the quarterfinals on Thursday, June 11.