It was four years ago that Serena Williams announced, in a poignant Vogue essay, that she was “evolving away from tennis. Whatever the wording, though, the message was clear: Daughter Olympia really wanted to be a big sister. And Williams knew she couldn’t accomplish that and still play tennis the way she wanted. She could not, in other words, have it all.
The headline used the dramatic word “farewell,” though Williams presciently noted she disliked the word “retirement. “Something’s got to give,” Williams wrote, in words that resonated with many women, in sports and beyond.
It’s a tournament where Serena won six singles titles, and Venus won two, one of them against Serena, who returned the favor the following year. And so Serena and Venus, a superstar doubles duo if ever there was one, will take the court Friday evening at the U.S. Open as a team, for the first time in four years. The doubles match, unsurprisingly, has a marquee spot: the night session, in Arthur Ashe Stadium. With cocktails, a DJ and all the rest of a U.S. Open evening spectacle. They’ll face Maya Joint of Australia and Chan Hao-Ching of Taiwan. It was Joint who defeated Serena in their recent Wimbledon singles match. But whether the sisters win is not, for many, the point. The point is that they’re back in the spotlight. Green, the fan from Virginia, did acknowledge that if it were up to her, at the same age, she would probably be watching, or commentating, rather than playing.
That 2001 victory for the elder sister came a full quarter-century ago – which is enough to give fans goose bumps that this partnership is alive, at ages 44 and 46. As a doubles team, the sisters won two of their 14 Grand Slam titles at the U.S. Open – in 1999 and 2009. They last played together at Flushing Meadows in 2022, losing in the first round.
“Super excited about it,” Venus said this week – after her singles match wrapped up at the ungodly hour of 2 a.m. That was a few weeks after Serena penned her Vogue essay. (This year, they had to scrap their appearance at Wimbledon because of Serena’s knee injury, but they played in Cincinnati last month.) Now, fans are happy to witness any “evolving” back to tennis that the sisters care to do. But she said she loved how happy Serena Williams looked when playing mixed doubles with Carlos Alcaraz, early in the tournament.
