Venus Williams' pain-free return to Grand Slam tennis means more to her than a US Open loss

NEW YORK — That Venus Williams lost her first Grand Slam match in two years — and what she says will be her last match of 2025 — didn't really matter Monday night. Certainly not to the thousands of supportive spectators in the Arthur Ashe Stadium seats who roared for her best shots and, in a way, for everything her career means to them, before sending her off the court with a standing ovation after a 6-3, 2-6, 6-1 defeat against 11th-seeded Karolina Muchova at the U.S. Open. The result also sure seemed beside the point to Williams herself, at 45 the oldest singles player at Flushing Meadows since 1981. She smiled and laughed and joked through her postmatch news conference — until, that is, a reporter asked something that made her think back to all of the injury and illness issues she dealt with for years. "Oh, what did I prove to myself?" Williams began, repeating part of the question. "I think for me, getting back on the court was about giving myself a chance to play more healthy. When you play unhealthy, it's in your mind. It's not just how you feel. You get stuck in your mind too. So it was nice to be freer." As she spoke those last few words, Williams bowed her head and closed her eyes, which welled with tears. After several seconds of silence, the tournament moderator ended the Q-and-A session and Williams rose from her seat at the front of the room. This was just the fourth singles match of a comeback that began in July after 16 months off the tennis tour, time marked by pain from uterine fibroids she had surgery for last year. "My team and I, we worked as hard and as fast as we could. We literally took no days off. I haven't gone to dinner. I haven't seen friends. I haven't done anything except train for three months as hard as I could," Williams said. "From each match that I didn't win, then I tried to go back and learn from that and then get better." She hasn't won a match at the U.S. Open in singles since 2019, when she got to the second round. Since then, Williams exited in the first round in 2020, 2022 and 2023, and missed the tournament in 2021 and 2024. Being back in the arena meant so much to her — and to those watching. "I don't think I've ever had a crowd that much on my side," said Williams, who appreciated the backing and yells of "Let's go, Venus!" that came from the stands even as she dropped 11 of the night's first 13 points. "I knew going into this match that people in this stadium, people in the United States, people around the world, were really rooting for me, and that felt great." This event holds a special place in her career. Her first Grand Slam final came at the 1997 U.S. Open, when she was 17. She won two of her seven major championships there, in 2000 and 2001. And it was at the U.S. Open more than a decade ago that Williams withdrew before she was supposed to play in the second round, revealing she had been diagnosed with Sjögren's syndrome, an energy-sapping auto-immune disease that can cause joint pain. Some thought she might leave tennis because of that, but she remained a leading figure — on and off the court. "She's such a legend of our sport," 2023 French Open runner-up Muchova said, calling it an honor "to share a court with her." Muchova, a 29-year-old from the Czech Republic, made it to the semifinals in New York in both 2023 — when she lost to eventual champion Coco Gauff in a match interrupted by a climate protest — and 2024. So perhaps it wasn't surprising that Williams started slowly. But with her fiance, Andrea Preti, leaping out of his seat after many points, Williams got back into the match, smacking vintage serves at up to 114 mph and finishing with just one fewer winner than Muchova. In the third set, though, as the contest reached two hours, Muchova was simply too good. Since making her professional debut in 1994, Williams has accomplished pretty much everything one can in tennis. There are the 14 Grand Slam trophies in women's doubles alongside her younger sister, Serena, plus two in mixed doubles. The record five Olympic tennis medals. The time at No. 1 in the WTA rankings. 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 U.S. 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." It's unclear what the future holds. Williams said she doesn't want to travel to tournaments outside the country; after the U.S. Open, the tour heads to Asia. When she was asked at the Washington tournament why she was still competing, she offered a simple reply: "Why not?"