NEW YORK — Even after two years away from Grand Slam tennis, Venus Williams displayed some big serves and powerful groundstrokes at the US Open on Monday night in front of a supportive crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium, before losing 6-3, 2-6, 6-1 to Karolina Muchova.
At age 45, Williams was the oldest singles player at the hard-court tournament since Renee Richards was 47 in 1981. She was making her 25th US Open main draw appearance, the most by any man or woman since the Open era began.
“She’s such a legend of our sport,” Muchova said about Williams, adding that it was an honor “to share a court with her.”
In just the fourth match of a comeback that began last month after more than a year off the tour, Williams didn’t exactly get to ease into things Monday: Muchova, a 29-year-old from Czechia, was the 2023 French Open runner-up. She also was seeded 11th in New York and made it to the semifinals there in both 2023 — when she lost to eventual champion Coco Gauff — and 2024.
So perhaps it wasn’t surprising that Williams started slowly, ceding 11 of the initial 13 points and falling behind 2-0. With members of the crowd shouting, “Let’s go, Venus!” and roaring after her winners — and her fiancé, Andrea Preti, leaping out of his seat — Williams took the next three games to go ahead 3-2.
Muchova grabbed the next four games to claim that set, which ended with Williams hitting four of her evening’s 10 double faults to get broken.
But Williams, who smacked serves at up to 114 mph and finished with just one fewer winner than Muchova, broke to begin the second set on her way to tying the match.
In the third set, though, as the contest reached two hours, Muchova was simply too good.
When the match ended, Williams left the court with a wave as fans rose to salute the player whose first US Open title arrived a full quarter of a century ago.
More recently, Williams was off the tennis tour for 16 months until entering a tournament in Washington last month, where she won one match each in singles and doubles. She hadn’t competed anywhere since the Miami Open in March 2024, and had surgery for uterine fibroids later last year.
The U.S. Tennis Association awarded wild cards to Williams for both the mixed doubles event last week and singles.
She hasn’t won a match at the US Open in singles since 2019, when she reached the second round. Since then, Williams exited in the first round in 2020, 2022 and 2023, and missed the tournament in 2021 and 2024.
Williams won two of her seven major singles championships at Flushing Meadows in 2000 and 2001. The other five came at Wimbledon.
Since making her professional debut in 1994, she also has collected 14 Grand Slam trophies in women’s doubles alongside her younger sister Serena, plus two in mixed doubles, earned a record five Olympic tennis medals and reached No. 1 in the WTA rankings.
Through the years, both siblings transcended their sport and became much more than successful athletes. Serena, who won 23 Grand Slam singles titles, played her last match at the 2022 US Open.
“She’s Venus Williams. She’s so iconic in so many different ways,” said Frances Tiafoe, an American player who won his first-round match in Ashe earlier Monday. “She’s won so much. And to see how much she loves game still at her age is amazing. It’s amazing to still see her out here.”
ESPN Research and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
