NO ONE KNEW what to expect from Venus Williams after her opening-round match at the Cincinnati Open earlier this month.
The seven-time major champion and former world No. 1 had just lost to Jessica Bouzas Maneiro, 6-4, 6-4, and it would be understandable if she was upset about the loss after showing flashes of her vintage form throughout.
There was silence as she walked into the room for her news conference about an hour after the match. But it didn’t last long. The moderator asked 45-year-old Williams to give her initial thoughts about what had transpired in the hot and humid afternoon sun, and a wide smile immediately filled her face.
“I had so much fun out there,” she said.
While Williams made it clear she had wanted to win — and felt she had her chances — she couldn’t hide the joy she felt simply by playing the sport she loved. That same unbridled enthusiasm was visible during her run at the Citi Open in July, her first tournament back in over a year, where she reached the second round in singles and doubles.
On Tuesday, Williams will make her eagerly awaited return to the US Open as part of the new-look mixed doubles draw, paired with longtime friend Reilly Opelka. Next week, after receiving a wild card, she will play in the singles draw in New York, marking her 25th main draw appearance at the event, and her first since 2023.
Williams is ranked No. 654 in the world, and it remains to be seen how she will fare at the tournament, in singles or in mixed doubles. But no matter what, one thing seems certain: Nearly 31 years after making her professional debut, and with countless health scares and surgeries along the way, there might be no one who will garner more respect from her peers or enjoy playing in the tournament more than Williams.
“Love is the key, right? If you don’t love it, then get out of it,” Williams told reporters in Cincinnati when asked about her longevity in the sport. “I think a lot of the motivation for me is just to come back and try to play in the best health that I can. I never stopped hitting the ball even when I was away, not as intensely as you would if you were playing tournaments, but I was still going out there.
“And I think that at the end of the day, you have to live your life on your own terms. Your terms should be yours. It doesn’t matter what anyone else says or what anyone else thinks. If you get to live life on your own terms, it is a life well lived.”
FOR MUCH OF the past two seasons, there was speculation that Williams had unceremoniously retired from tennis. She had played in just two tournaments in 2024, in Indian Wells and Miami, and had lost in the opening round in both.
While her younger sister Serena had retired to great fanfare at the US Open in 2022, with a much-watched celebratory run, Venus had made it clear she wanted no such victory lap into the sunset. Notoriously private and often cagey with the media, she had frequently dismissed questions about her future and rarely given as much as a hint when asked.
“I wouldn’t tell you, so … I don’t know. I don’t know why you’re asking,” Williams said at a news conference at the US Open two years ago.
But with the absence of Serena, as well as other highly decorated peers such as Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Maria Sharapova, in recent years, and her successful interests outside of tennis, some wondered whether Venus had followed suit, on her own terms.
Still, there were clues, especially in recent months that Williams hadn’t stepped away from the game completely. There were occasional practice and training videos on her social media pages. In March, it was announced by the Indian Wells tournament that she had received a wild card to play. She awkwardly denied she would be playing at the event a few days later, but a seed had been planted. And for Williams, the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the “fake news,” in her words, was surprising.
“I just remember everyone was so happy, that I felt sad to let everyone down and say, ‘I’m not playing,'” Williams said earlier this month. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to break anyone’s heart. I’m sorry it’s not real and I’ll not be there.'”
Williams experienced that same overwhelming fan admiration when she appeared throughout the French Open as part of TNT’s broadcast team. An on-set conversation featuring Williams, Sloane Stephens and eventual champion Coco Gauff went almost immediately viral. Both Gauff and Stephens, who has been sidelined by injury since February, were effusive with their praise for Williams and how she had inspired their own careers as young Black women in the sport.
Behind the scenes, Williams was on the practice court and in the gym. After undergoing surgery last August to remove uterine fibroids, Williams said she was initially unable to even stand up straight during the early days of her recovery. But it didn’t take long for her to get back to the familiar and comfortable confines of the tennis court, a place that had provided her refuge since her early childhood. She wasn’t exactly thinking about a professional return at first — joking that she knew it would at least help her “keep my figure” if nothing else — but she was always focused on improving.
In the spring, Williams asked Mark Ein, the Citi Open tournament owner, whether a wild card would be possible.
“She mentioned this to me — actually months ago — as something, and asked if we would consider it,” Ein said in an interview with Ben Rothenberg of “Bounces” ahead of the tournament in July. “I said, ‘Of course.’ And so obviously it’s been in the works for quite a while. But she’s been training hard, and we confirmed it.”
Williams spent a day at Wimbledon in early July as a spectator, and it cemented her desire to return.
“It was so beautiful and exciting, and I remembered all the times that I had, and of course the adrenaline, all those things,” Williams later said. “I think just the pure fun of playing the game, the fun of the challenge, overcoming — when you play, you overcome so many challenges: your opponents, the conditions, a lot of times you have to overcome yourself. Those things are very exciting.”
Her participation at the Citi Open was announced soon after, about two weeks before the tournament was scheduled to start, and this time, she didn’t deny it. She did everything she could on the practice court to get in match shape and said her goal leading into the tournament was simply to “get the best” out of herself.
Williams arrived to her pre-tournament news conference with a smile plastered on her face, and it never seemed to fade throughout the week. “I’m in love with tennis,” she explained.
While her enthusiasm and the fan support were palpable, it remained to be seen how Williams would play in her first competitive match in 16 months. No amount of time on the practice court can replicate a match, and she admitted it would take time to get back into the swing of things.
In her first match, playing doubles with Hailey Baptiste — a 23-year-old who called the opportunity “a dream come true” — the pair was dominant against Clervie Ngounoue and Eugenie Bouchard, earning a 6-3, 6-1 victory in front of a sold-out crowd that included Kevin Durant. (Worth noting, it marked one of the final matches of Bouchard’s career before retiring. The 31-year-old was born the same year that Williams made her professional debut.)
Baptiste, who met Williams while attending the tournament as a young fan, was in awe of Williams’ competitive fire after the match.
“I think that she’s always out to kill, which is obvious, because she’s been so dominant in her career,” Baptiste said. “We’re down one time 15-40 in her service game, and she’s like, ‘All right, let’s get three in a row.’ And we did.”
The following day, Williams was back in action on the singles court. Facing Peyton Stearns, then ranked No. 35 in the world, Williams needed just 97 minutes to become the oldest player to win a tour-level singles match since Martina Navratilova in 2004, earning a decisive 6-3, 6-4 victory. It was her first singles win in almost two years, and her joy was evident as she smiled and waved to the crowd — and even displayed her signature postmatch twirl. She later told reporters she was feeling “amazing” and reiterated how happy she was to be there.
“You know, it’s the first step, and the first match is always extremely difficult,” Williams said. “It’s hard to describe how difficult it is to play a first match after so much time off. So going into the match, I know I have the ability to win, but it’s all about actually winning. So this is the best result, to play a good match and win.
“I’m here with my friends, family, people I love, and the fans, too, who I love and they love me, so this has been just a beautiful night.”
Stearns — who said Williams’ serves were “on fire” — couldn’t help but praise her opponent after the match.
“I have so much respect for her to come back here and play, win or lose,” Stearns said. “That takes a lot of guts to step back onto court, especially with what she’s done for the sport.”
Highlights of the match spread far and wide. Though Williams lost in her next matches in singles and doubles, she still earned a wild-card invitation to the Cincinnati Open as a result. While she said after her second-round singles loss that it was “definitely not the result” she had wanted, she added that she “couldn’t have been happier with my first week back.”
Williams has continued to radiate that same contentment and joy all summer. From her packed practice sessions in Cincinnati to her news conferences to her match demeanor, Williams seems to appreciate everything that comes with the life of a professional tennis player. Even her peers couldn’t help but be giddy about her presence. Gauff, now a two-time major champion and ranked No. 2 in the world, played against Williams in her major main draw debut in 2019 — and called it “surreal” to still have Williams around.
Gauff added that she knew it had been an honor to share the court with her more than six years ago but that she had relished it because it could be the only time she would get the chance. She knows better now.
“Now that she’s playing on tour [again] and also playing great, I know there’s definitely a high chance that we’ll play each other again,” Gauff said in Cincinnati. “And I look forward to it because anytime you can step on the court with a legend is special, regardless of the result or things like that, and something that I can tell my kids [about someday].”
While Williams had already indicated she was planning to play, and it felt at times like the worst-kept secret in tennis, she officially received a wild card to play in the singles draw at the US Open on Wednesday. She is a two-time champion at the event, although many of the other competitors in the draw were not born for either of her titles, in 2000 and 2001. She last won a match at the event in 2019, before losing in the second round, but had reached the semifinals two years prior.
Williams, who will be the oldest player to play singles at the tournament since 1981, has little to prove at this stage. She has made it clear she wants to win, but it is evident that simply being healthy and able to play at a high level is a victory. In addition to the painful symptoms she endured with the uterine fibroids and in the aftermath of the surgical procedure, she was diagnosed with Sjögren’s syndrome in 2011, and she has been candid about the impact the autoimmune disorder has had on her life and career.
Williams is proud of what she has done on the court — and off the court as tennis’s leader in achieving pay equity at Wimbledon and Roland Garros — but is also very aware of the one major final she has never played in: mixed doubles at the US Open.
She has made it to the title match in every other singles, doubles and mixed doubles draw at all of the Slams — a mind-blowing stat, to be sure — but has only ever made it to the quarterfinals in mixed doubles in New York. While some see this year’s revamped event as more of a glorified exhibition, it’s far more than that to Williams.
“It’s kind of a priority for me to play that because it’s the one thing I’ve never done,” Williams said. “I’ve always been very close to the winner’s circle of every single thing in this career I’ve had. But that’s the one piece.
“So my goal is that Reilly will carry the team. He’s been informed, and he’s got his assignment.”
Williams does not plan to play in another tournament this year once the US Open has concluded. But, as she has rarely played during the late-season Asian swing over the past decade, that doesn’t exactly mean much in terms of her long-term future.
Not that she would ever tell anyone if it did.
In her fourth decade as a professional athlete, it seems nothing should ever be assumed about Williams — her love for tennis simply knows no bounds.
“I’m very much in the moment,” Williams said when asked about next season. “I don’t think you should ever rule me out. That’s all I can say.”