MASON
\nSerena and Venus Williams played their first doubles match together since the 2022 U.S. Open and lost a thriller, 2-6, 6-1 (10-8) to Marta Kostyuk and Peyton Stearns on Monday night at the Cincinnati Open. The sisters nearly recovered from a 6-0 deficit in the match tiebreaker before a double-fault by Venus Williams ended their first doubles appearance in a non-Grand Slam event since the Italian Open in 2016.
\n\u201cI thought it was fun,\u201d Serena said. \u201cI thought it was special. We kicked off a little rust in the middle of the match and just, you know (were) starting to feel it. I didn\u2019t come out here to win this tournament. Winning is obviously great. But in this position just, you know, having fun. It was really cool to be able to do this again.\u201d Serena had been off the tour since 2022 before returning this summer at age 44. The sisters planned to play together at Wimbledon but had to withdraw after Serena injured her knee while losing her singles match. They entered Cincinnati as a wild card.
\n\u201cEventually we would find our way to each other,\u201d the 46-year-old Venus said about the decision to play doubles again. \u201cIt\u2019s our first time playing together in forever. It was great for us to get out there and do it. Kostyuk and Stearns, both 24, are playing in their first tournament together. Kostyuk is from Ukraine. Stearns grew up in the Cincinnati suburb of Mason, where the tournament is played every year.
\n\u201cI kind of expected it but it stung a little bit that this is my hometown,\u201d Stearns said about the pro-Williams sisters crowd. \u201cI won\u2019t hold it against anyone. The crowd was going for them but we used it to our advantage and flipped the script.\u201d After dropping the first set, the Williams sisters rolled in the second to force a match tiebreak.
\nKostyuk and Stearns went ahead 6-0, but consecutive double-faults by Kostyuk helped the Williamses get within 8-7. It was 9-8 after Serena powerfully put away an overhead before Venus double-faulted. \u201cThe crowd got the show,\u201d Kostyuk said. \u201cThey probably couldn\u2019t ask for anything better. At the end a tiebreak is a lottery. You never know which way it\u2019s going to go.\u201d
\nVenus and Serena have won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles and 22 total. Serena won one with Alexandra Stevenson in 2002 at Leipzig. All of Venus\u2019 doubles titles have been with her sister. They also have won three Olympic gold medals together. Serena has won 23 singles Grand Slam titles. Venus has won seven.
\nSwiatek rallies for 3-set win and other results In other results Monday, defending Cincinnati champion Iga Swiatek rallied from a set down to win her eighth consecutive match, beating Maria Sakkari, 4-6, 6-1, 6-1. No. 2 seed Elena Rybakina beat Magdalena Frech, 6-4, 7-6. Third-ranked Jessica Pegula beat fellow American Emma Navarro, 7-5, 6-2. World No. 3 and top seed Alexander Zverev won his ATP-tour leading 46th match this season, outlasting Terence Atmane, 7-6 (4), 7-6 (6). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MASON Serena and Venus Williams played their first doubles match together since the 2022 U.S. Open and lost a thriller, 2-6, 6-1 (10-8) to Marta Kostyuk and Peyton Stearns on Monday night at the Cincinnati Open. The sisters nearly recovered from a 6-0 deficit in the match tiebreaker before a double-fault by Venus Williams ended …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":101827,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101813"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101840,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101813\/revisions\/101840"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}