WIMBLEDON, England — The Wimbledon Championships this year will be without one of its fixtures of the past 16: Venus Williams.
Williams announced her withdrawal on Tuesday, making this year’s Wimbledon the first one she will miss since 1996, before her full-time professional career began in earnest.
This will be the third Grand Slam event in the last 10 that Williams has missed, having previously pulled out of the 2011 French Open and last year’s Australian Open.
Williams, who turned 33 on Monday, has struggled for nearly a year with back problems that often have prevented her from consistently hitting with full power, especially on her serve. The problem became most pronounced during a semifinal in Cincinnati last August, after she tweaked the injury during warm-ups.
“Unfortunately, I will not be able to participate in Wimbledon this year,” Williams wrote in a statement written on her official Facebook page. “I am extremely disappointed, as I have always loved the Championships, but I need to take time to let my back heal. I look forward to returning to the courts as soon as possible.”
In the statement, Williams named July 8, the Monday after Wimbledon ends, as her projected return date. She is scheduled to play in World Team Tennis for the first three days of that week with the Washington Kastles.
Williams has won five Wimbledon singles titles, in 2000-01, 2005, and 2007-08. She also lost three times in the final to her younger sister Serena, who will go into this year’s tournament as the top seed, defending champion, and prohibitive favorite.
Either Venus or Serena has won the Wimbledon title for 10 of the last 13 years. They have also won the doubles title five times.
But last year, struggling with Sjogren’s Syndrome, a sluggish Williams lost meekly in the first round, winning just four games against Elena Vesnina. She would, however, recover to win the doubles title.
Though her issues with fatigue have seemed largely resolved in 2013, her back problems have persisted. In March in Miami, she withdrew from a third round match. In April, she struggled through a Fed Cup victory in Florida, her sore back leaving her awkwardly arming in serves at greatly diminished speeds.
She pulled out of the Madrid tournament on clay in May, and her compromised serve was again on display in first round losses in Rome and the French Open.
“My strategy was more or less to put the ball in, and that’s very difficult for me, too, because that’s not who I am,” Williams said after the first round loss to Urszula Radwanska in Paris. “But that’s all I had.”
After the 3-hour, 19-minute loss, Williams faced questions about how much longer she could continue.
“Obviously at some point everyone has to retire, so that’s an asterisk,” she admitted, after saying she would never give up. “But I feel that I have to give myself a chance to continue working and feeling better. And I wouldn’t just give up just because it was difficult. That’s not me. So my thing is that I’m going to keep continue trying.”
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