Two months after Serena Williams revealed in a 2022 Vogue essay that she was hanging up her racket to focus on her family, she clarified what “evolving away from tennis” really meant.

“I am not retired,” the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion said that October, following her 41st birthday and three matches at the U.S. Open that were widely assumed to be the last of her legendary career. “The chances [of a return] are very high. You can come to my house—I have a court.”

This month, the 44-year-old Williams made good on that promise, entering WTA Tour events in London and Berlin to compete in doubles. Next week, she will continue her comeback at Wimbledon with a doubles match Thursday or Friday alongside her older sister Venus—herself a tennis icon, with seven Grand Slam singles titles—while also making her return to singles tennis on Monday or Tuesday against unseeded Maya Joint, a 20-year-old Australian ranked 53rd in the world.

If Williams can defy the odds and end her nearly four-year layoff with a 24th major championship—extending her Open Era record and drawing her even with Margaret Court’s all-time women’s mark—she will add a $4.8 million winner’s check to her $94.8 million in career prize money.

It seems safe to assume, however, that money is not her motivation.

By the time Williams first stepped away from tennis, she had hauled in almost $450 million in estimated pretax income in a pro career that began in 1995, when she was 14, and took off when she won the 1999 U.S. Open. That figure placed her well ahead of history’s second-highest-paid female athlete, her longtime tennis rival Maria Sharapova, who had pocketed $325 million when she retired in 2020 at 32.

Four years later, Williams still has no real challengers on the career prize money list—No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka has won barely half as much, after passing Venus Williams last year—and her off-court business is also on a winning streak. Over the last 12 months,........

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