American tennis icon Venus Williams won't be taking any time off this summer as she announced an upcoming exhibition match against retired Puerto Rican star Monica Puig.
The match, dubbed the Battle of the Legends, is scheduled to take place on September 15th, 2023, in Puig's home country of Puerto Rico, at the Puerto Rico Coliseum, with tickets already going on sale. Williams is therefore set to be a busy fixture this summer.
The 43-year-old will play the full North American hard-court schedule of the biggest WTA events on the calendar, including the WTA 1000 doubleheader in Montreal and Cincinnati, before heading to New York to play an astonishing 24th US Open main draw. Williams enters all three events as a wild card.
Williams has played just six matches this year, winning twice and losing the other four. She is lowly ranked and can only enter high-profile WTA tournaments with a wild card. The seven-time Grand Slam champion has also battled a freak knee injury in recent weeks which she sustained while playing on grass in Birmingham. She has since played with the injury while wearing a knee cast.
The match will be Monica Puig's first since announcing her shock retirement at the age of 28 last June, citing repeated injuries as the major factor in arriving at that decision. She won two career titles on the WTA Tour and peaked at a career-high ranking of number 27.
Puig's most significant accomplishment was when she shockingly won the 2016 Olympic gold medal, becoming the first Puerto Rican to complete that feat. Despite her early retirement, the now 29-year-old has stayed within the tennis ecosystem working as a broadcaster for Tennis Channel and ESPN.
Puig has also found a new passion besides tennis, and that is marathon running. She took part in the 2022 New York City Marathon.
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