NEW YORK — Venus Williams will compete in girls’s doubles at the U.S. Open after receiving a wild-card entry with 2021 singles runner-up Leylah Fernandez of Canada on Tuesday.
The 45-year-old Williams is showing at her first Grand Slam event in two years after making a comeback to professional tennis in July following 16 months away from the tour.
She competed in blended doubles final week, then in singles on Monday night time — each additionally by way of wild-card invites from the U.S. Tennis Affiliation.
Williams exited within the first spherical every time, however was thrilled to be again out on court docket after coping with accidents and sickness. She had surgical procedure for uterine fibroids final yr, and spoke Monday following her three-set exit in singles towards Eleventh-seeded Karolina Muchova about being relieved to be pain-free.
“Oh, what did I show to myself?” Williams mentioned, repeating a part of a reporter’s query at her post-match information convention. “I believe for me, getting again on the court docket was about giving myself an opportunity to play extra wholesome. Whenever you play unhealthy, it’s in your thoughts. It’s not simply how you’re feeling. You get caught in your thoughts, too. So it was good to be freer.”
She was the oldest particular person to play singles on the U.S. Open since 1981, and the spectators liked each second of it, greeting her with digicam telephones held aloft, shouting “Let’s go, Venus!” through the match and ushering her off the Arthur Ashe Stadium court docket with a standing ovation.
Along with her seven Grand Slam singles trophies, Williams owns 14 main titles in girls’s doubles, all together with her youthful sister, Serena, as her accomplice. Two of these got here in New York, in 1999 and 2009.
They final performed collectively on the U.S. Open in 2022, the yr Serena performed her last singles match there.
Williams and Fernandez, a 22-year-old from Laval, Que., will face the sixth-seeded pair of Lyudmyla Kichenok of Ukraine and Ellen Perez of Australia within the first spherical.
Fernandez misplaced to Emma Raducanu within the U.S. Open singles last 4 years in the past.
Williams hadn’t performed an official match anyplace for the reason that Miami Open in March 2024 till she surprisingly accepted a wild card to the hard-court event in Washington final month. She entered the singles and doubles occasions there, successful one match in every bracket.
This U.S. Open is her first main event since she performed at Flushing Meadows in 2023.
