Williams Sisters Bow Out at US Open but Prove Competitive Fire Remains

Twenty thousand people fell silent when Serena and Venus Williams walked onto Arthur Ashe Stadium on a Friday night in early September, and the quiet held through the points—a rarity in a venue where crowds usually chatter freely. The sisters, now 44 and 46, were back at the US Open for the first time in four years, and the occasion commanded a kind of reverence that a women's doubles first-round match rarely receives.

They lost. Chan Hao-ching and Maya Joint, the 14th seeds, took the match 6-3, 6-7, 7-6 in a first-to-10 tiebreak in the decider. But the scoreline barely captured what happened on court. The Williams sisters came into the match having last played together at a WTA event in Cincinnati, where they also fell in a match tiebreak. Before that, their Wimbledon return this summer had been cut short when Serena injured her knee in a singles loss to the same Maya Joint, a 20-year-old who would face her again here in doubles. The path back had been fractured and uncertain. This night, however, suggested something else: that the competitive instinct which defined their careers remained intact, even if the outcomes did not.

The first set went badly. Serena and Venus looked tentative, surrendering it 6-3 without much resistance. Chanda Rubin, who lost to them in the 1999 US Open doubles final and now works as a commentator, wondered aloud whether they would find their rhythm. But in the second set, something shifted. They held off four break points in the fifth and seventh games. Serena raised her level to match her sister's play. The momentum swung. They forced a tiebreak and won it 8-6, leveling the match and sending the crowd into a roar that had been building since they arrived.

The third set became a test of will. At 4-1 down, the American pair looked finished. The stadium quieted again, this time with the weight of disappointment. But they rallied—a hallmark of their careers, as the reporting noted, and one that had carried them through three decades of professional tennis. They clawed back to force another tiebreak. At 5-0 in that tiebreak, they were on the verge of the second round. Then Chan and Joint fought back. Double faults from each Williams sister helped their opponents close the gap. The tiebreak went to 10-7, and it was over.

What struck observers was not the loss but the quality of the performance. The sisters moved sharply. Their groundstrokes were solid. They created problems for opponents who were younger, ranked higher, and had nothing to lose. Joint, the 20-year-old who had beaten Serena at Wimbledon just weeks earlier, called the atmosphere "surreal" and spoke of the privilege of playing against legends. Even in defeat, the Williams sisters had commanded the night.

The questions that followed were about what comes next. Serena had told Good Morning America earlier in the week that she wanted to play singles again. Venus, after her own singles exit on Monday, said she should not "have to" think beyond the doubles. But neither sister spoke to the media after the match. US Open organizers said they were "not available." The future remained unwritten—a rare position for two women who have spent thirty years shaping the sport around them. They had won 30 Grand Slam singles titles between them and 14 doubles titles as a pair. They had changed tennis when they arrived as teenagers in the 1990s. Now, at a combined age of 90, they had shown they could still compete on the biggest stage, even if they could not quite win. What that means for what comes next, neither they nor anyone else seemed ready to say.