THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, London — It was just one match. It was on the most rarefied court in professional tennis, against a young player still figuring out who she is, because that’s what 20-year-olds like Maya Joint are doing at this stage of their lives.It was Serena Williams’ first competitive singles match in nearly four years.All of that makes Tuesday night on Centre Court an imperfect environment in which to render a judgment on whether the sport has evolved too far beyond where it was for Williams, at 44, to hang not just with the new generation of stars, but also the rest of a talented WTA Tour that gets deeper by the day.Barry Cowan, a British tennis commentator and former player, said Monday that he watched Williams practice with Zeynep Sönmez of Turkey the other day. Sönmez, 24, is the world No. 51. She’s a solid player but hardly has a reputation as a big hitter. Cowan said he was stunned to see that Sönmez was hitting a bigger ball than Williams.A few tennis generations ago, Williams and her sister Venus changed the sport with their thumping power. They were the standard. Come Tuesday, the tennis world knew that Williams would bring her unmatched presence onto the court. But would her game possess the substance necessary to still be competitive after all those years away?It would. Joint, who edged her out 6-3, 6-7(6), 6-3 will attest to that.“I went in expecting, thinking that she’d bring her best game that she brought when she was at her peak, because you need to prepare for the hardest possible match,” Joint said in her news conference.“I think she played really well.”Why Serena Williams chose Wimbledon to return to playing singlesAva WallaceFor elite athletes who return to the sports arena in their 40s, the exact arena they once ruled can have a big impact. The pace of evolution in skiing never concerned Lindsey Vonn, another 40-something who came out of retirement to compete, and briefly became the fastest skier in the world once again before wrecking her leg in a violent crash at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. The times that skiers were recording in the competitions she used to dominate hadn’t moved much during her five-year absence.