Serena Williams steps onto a doubles court tonight with a name attached to hers that hasn’t shared a scoreboard in nearly four years. She and sister Venus face American Peyton Stearns and Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk in the first round of the Cincinnati Open, their first match as a team since the 2022 US Open.
The pairing is rare enough to grab the attention of even hardened longtime tennis watchers. Serena and Venus have shared a doubles court below the Grand Slam or Olympic level only five times in the past decade, making tonight’s match just the sixth non-major event they’ve entered together, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Both teams needed a wild card to reach the draw.
- Opponents: Peyton Stearns and Marta Kostyuk
- Start time: Not before 7 p.m. ET, night session
- Location: Grandstand Stadium, Lindner Family Tennis Center, Mason, Ohio
- TV: Tennis Channel and Tennis Channel 2
- Streaming: Tennis Channel Plus, Fubo, DirecTV Stream
Serena and Venus Williams Return to Doubles in Mason
Serena’s path back to Cincinnati started in June, when she accepted a doubles wild card alongside Victoria Mboko at Queen’s Club, marking her first professional match since walking away from the sport at the 2022 US Open. She added another doubles pairing with Karolina Muchova in Berlin before turning to singles at Wimbledon, where a knee injury forced her and Venus to scrap plans to reunite in doubles there, according to the WTA’s report on the sisters’ wild card.
Stearns brings a hometown storyline to the opening round. Born and raised in nearby Mason, she won the 2022 NCAA singles title at Texas before turning pro, and Venus already has a recent result against her, having beaten Stearns at last year’s DC Open, according to Hoodline‘s account of the matchup. Kostyuk arrives in the best form of her career, having climbed to a career-high No. 11 singles ranking in July after winning the Madrid Open and reaching the semifinals at the French Open and Wimbledon.
Williams Sisters’ Doubles History Runs Deep
Whatever happens on the Grandstand court, the sisters’ doubles résumé remains untouchable. Serena and Venus have never lost a Grand Slam doubles final, finishing 14-0 together, and they’ve won three Olympic gold medals as a pair, in 2000, 2008 and 2012, the WTA notes. Their most recent major title together came at Wimbledon in 2016, and their last joint appearance anywhere came at the 2022 US Open, where they fell in the first round.
Venus, now 46, hasn’t found her singles form this season, entering Cincinnati on a lengthy losing streak, but she still made headlines last year as the oldest woman in 21 years to win a WTA Tour match. Serena, 44, hasn’t played Cincinnati since 2022, a tournament she won back-to-back in 2014 and 2015. The sisters also remain the only siblings to have simultaneously held the WTA’s top two singles rankings, a feat first achieved in July 2002, with Serena spending 319 weeks total at No. 1 to Venus’s 11.
Serena’s return has unfolded in stages, doubles first, then a Wimbledon singles run that ended in three sets against 20-year-old Maya Joint. Cincinnati adds another chapter, and whatever the scoreline against Stearns and Kostyuk, the sisters will have shared a court again â something that, four years ago, felt far from guaranteed.
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