While Venus Williams says she’ll miss the Australian Open for a third straight year in 2024, but the 43-year-old former World No.1 has no intentions on calling time on her tennis career just yet.

In a recent interview posted to social media, Williams says she’s “targeting” a return to competition in March, and that the fall she suffered in the third game of her first-round loss to eventual semifinalist Elina Svitolina at Wimbledon in July affected her fourth quarter of 2023 more than previously known. 

Svitolina beats Venus Williams in Wimbledon opener

Though Williams played the summer events in Montreal and Cincinnati ahead of the US Open, and beat Veronika Kudermetova for her first Top 20 win in four years in the latter, her last match of the season was a 6-1, 6-1 loss to Belgian Greet Minnen in the first round in Flushing Meadows. It was her most lopsided US Open loss in 100 career matches at the tournament.

Afterwards, Williams posted a video on her YouTube channel documenting her NYC campaign, where she stated that a sore leg hampered her preparations. 

“I tried my best to recover for the US Open. I did not reach my form so now I am just resting until I get back,” Williams says in the latest clip, which was shared on X — the platform formerly called Twitter — by a tennis fan last week. 

“I am targeting March, that’s when the tournaments go back to the States, so my goal is to be up and running when tournaments come back to the U.S.”

Williams played seven events in 2023 and posted a 3-7 record, as her schedule was interrupted for nearly six months as a consequence of an injury she suffered at the year’s first event, the ASB Classic in Auckland. She returned to action for the grass-court season, where she notably beat Camila Giorgi in a 3-hour, 17-minute epic in Birmingham.