It had been four years since Serena and Venus Williams played together in the U.S. Open.
The sisters crammed years’ worth of peak drama into Friday’s family reunion in Flushing.
The Williamses lost their first-round doubles match, but in the end, the scoreline is just numbers.
They gave 24,000 fans who packed Arthur Ashe Stadium — and frankly, the tennis world at large — moments and memories they won’t forget.
With Serena making her comeback after a four-year layoff — she dislikes the word retirement — the sisters fell 3-6, 7-6 (6), 6-7 (7) to Maya Joint and Hao-Ching Chan. It was a back-and-forth affair that had all the entertainment one would expect.
The Williamses trailed 4-1 in the third set before they stormed back. And they reeled off nine straight points to go up 5-0 in the tiebreak.
But in the end, they ran out of steam.
They dropped 10 of the last dozen in the tiebreak. Chan, an in-form doubles player, came up big at the net to help steal the victory.
But clearly not the spotlight.
That was never going to happen, especially with Serena making her return.
“Being able to play against such legends of the game is super special,” Joint said in an on-court TV interview.
The Williams sisters declined interview requests.
While Venus has been playing singles, Serena stepped away to be a mother. The sisters hadn’t played together in Flushing Meadows since 2022, when they fell in the first round in what was largely presumed to be Serena’s swan song here.
Just weeks earlier, she had written an essay in Vogue in which she said she was “evolving away from tennis.” But she was clear in pointing out her distaste for the word “retirement.”
And thanks to prodding from her 9-year-old daughter Olympia, that layoff may have been more of a break.
“You need to play with Auntie VeVe,” Serena, 44, recalled her daughter’s mandate this week on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “She said it so clear and so calm. She’s like my mom, she doesn’t really talk a lot, but when she does talk, you listen. And I was like, ‘OK.’”
So Serena has returned, but so far has been largely foiled by Joint.
Serena lost to Joint, the 20-year-old Australian, a foe less than half her age, at Wimbledon. She injured her knee in that defeat and had to pull out of a planned doubles match with Venus, 46, at the All England Club.
Their reunion was just a dream deferred, not altogether dashed.
The Williams sisters returned as a doubles team last month in Cincinnati. And Friday they took the court together in the U.S. Open.
They were beaten, albeit just barely. And with the rust clearly evident.
Venus got knocked out of the singles draw in the wee hours of Monday morning, playing until past 2 a.m.
She has lost six straight at the U.S. Open and 15 in a row overall since her last win in Washington back in July 2025. It prompted some to complain about her receiving a wild card, although organizers say they never had a second thought.
On Friday, she was the better of the Williams sisters.
Serena, arguably the best server in history, struggled and was broken twice in the first set as they lost 6-3.
But the Williamses settled in during the second set, as Serena took something off her fastball and started to serve better.
They won the tiebreaker to force a third set.
The siblings trailed 4-1 in the third, but rallied as Joint’s nerves started to fray. Serena attacked like a shark smelling blood, and they came back to force a tiebreaker. They actually took nine straight points and looked to be in control, up 5-0 in the tiebreak, before they lost ten of the final dozen points.
Joint and Chan won the match, but not the moment, as the Williams sisters walked off smiling and waving to cheers from the crowd, thanking them for the latest in a long line of memories.
