Key takeaways:
- Serena and Venus Williams lost to No. 14 seeds Maya Joint and Hao-Ching Chan in the first round of U.S. Open women’s doubles after more than three hours at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
- The Williams sisters rallied from 4-1 down in the third set and led 5-0 in the deciding tiebreak before losing the match.
- The sisters have won the U.S. Open women’s doubles title twice, in 1999 and 2009, and are 27-8 in 10 appearances in the event.
Serena and Venus Williams returned to the U.S. Open women’s doubles spotlight Friday night and pushed a seeded opponent to the edge, but their comeback fell just short in a three-set first-round loss at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
The sisters, playing together at the tournament in New York for the first time in four years, lost to the No. 14-seeded team of Maya Joint and Hao-Ching Chan, 6-3, 6-7 (6), 7-6, after more than three hours. CBS News reported the final match tiebreak score as 10-8; The Guardian listed the deciding tiebreak as 7-6 (7).
The match swung sharply in the final set. Serena and Venus trailed 4-1, fought back to force the deciding tiebreak, then built a 5-0 lead. Joint and Chan recovered and won the final points as the Williams sisters, one of the most accomplished doubles teams in tennis history, missed a chance to extend their run.
The loss marked another difficult doubles finish for the sisters this summer. They also lost in a match tiebreak at the Cincinnati Open after rejoining forces there for the first time since the 2022 U.S. Open, a tournament that had been expected to be Serena’s final appearance in Flushing Meadows.
Serena, 44, returned to tennis this year after four years away. Friday’s defeat was her second loss to Joint this summer. Joint, an Australian player, beat Serena in three sets at Wimbledon during Serena’s return to singles play. Serena and Venus later withdrew from their Wimbledon doubles match after Serena injured her knee.
Serena did not take a singles wild card at this year’s U.S. Open after that knee injury, The Guardian reported. She did play mixed doubles with Carlos Alcaraz, winning their first match before losing in the quarterfinals to Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli, 5-4 (4), 4-1.
Venus, 46, made her 26th singles appearance at Flushing Meadows this year but lost early Monday morning to fellow American wild card Sofia Kenin, 6-2, 7-6 (6), after not taking the court until midnight. CBS News reported it was her 15th consecutive singles defeat, dating to her last victory in Washington in July 2025, and that she had lost six straight U.S. Open singles matches since winning in the first round in 2019.
After that singles loss, Venus said she was not ready to assess her future in tennis.
“I don’t think I should have to,” she told a small group of reporters. “My mind is fully focused on that: how I recover from this completely insane evening and get ready for the next one.”
Before Friday’s match, nine-time Grand Slam doubles champion Bethanie Mattek-Sands said the setting would be challenging for Joint and Chan.
“I mean, the night match against the Williams sisters with the New York crowd, it’s going to be tough,” Mattek-Sands told CBS News.
The Williams sisters won the U.S. Open women’s doubles title in 1999 and 2009 and are 27-8 across 10 appearances in the event, according to CBS News. Their careers at the tournament stretch back decades: Venus reached the singles final at 17 in 1997, Serena won her first Grand Slam title there in 1999, and the sisters faced each other in the 2001 U.S. Open final, the first Grand Slam final between siblings.
Neither player gave an indication after Friday’s loss that it would be their last appearance. The Guardian reported that they left the court discreetly and declined to hold a post-match news conference.
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