FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y. — The last time Serena and Venus Williams played doubles together at the US Open was 2022, and they lost in the first round. Serena retired from professional tennis two days later. What followed, for four years, was the question of whether they would ever compete here together again.
On Friday night, they will.
The Williams sisters will take the court at Flushing Meadows in the first round of the US Open women’s doubles championship, facing the No. 14-seeded pair of Hao-Ching Chan and Maya Joint. It is their first Grand Slam doubles appearance together since that 2022 exit. Between them, they are 46 and 44 years old, and they have won the US Open doubles title twice, in 1999 and in 2009, across nine total appearances at this tournament as a team.
Their record here, across those nine appearances, is 27 wins and 7 losses. They have never lost a Grand Slam doubles final. They have 14 Grand Slam doubles titles combined. Those numbers, though remarkable, are not what brings them back.
What brings them back is simpler: they want to be here. Venus has called the US Open her home Grand Slam, and she has been competing at this tournament in some form since she was 17 years old. Serena, 44, has been on the grounds at Flushing Meadows all week already. She and Carlos Alcaraz played mixed doubles together at this tournament, winning their opening match before losing in the quarterfinals. She had barely stepped off the court from that run before this one was set.
The opponent for Friday carries its own subplot. Maya Joint is the 20-year-old Australian who beat Serena at Wimbledon in June, 6-3, 6-7(6), 6-3, a match in which Serena injured her knee and was forced to withdraw from planned doubles play at that tournament. The rematch she never got in singles arrives here, in doubles, at the same tournament where her career reached its most famous chapter.
The preparation for Friday was not flawless. The sisters played their first doubles match together in four years at the Cincinnati Open in August, losing to Marta Kostyuk and Peyton Stearns, 6-2, 1-6, and then 10-8 in the match tiebreak after rallying from 6-0 down in that final set. They won a set. They fought back. They still lost.
A 10-8 tiebreak loss to a professional doubles pairing, after a four-year competitive gap, tells you something. What exactly it tells you is unclear until they play a Grand Slam draw.
Yahoo Sports reported that Venus has consistently described the US Open as the tournament where she most wants to compete when she takes the court, and that her comfort at Flushing Meadows runs deeper than at any other Grand Slam venue. Serena, who has won six singles titles here, has expressed no interest in slowing down as long as her body allows her to compete.
The field they have entered is substantial. Taylor Townsend and Katerina Siniacova are the No. 1 seeds. The bracket is full of younger, higher-ranked pairs. The sisters are unseeded and carrying a loss from their most recent tournament together.
That is also the full picture. Madison Keys saved five match points earlier this week on this same complex. Carlos Alcaraz dropped the first set before winning the next three. The US Open, as a rule, is not a reliable respecter of form.
Between them, Serena has six US Open singles titles and Venus has two, along with two doubles titles together. No active player competing this week holds a record at this tournament that matches what the two of them have built here. Whether a 46-year-old and a 44-year-old can be competitive against pairs two decades younger will be answered on court. The more important question, the one the US Open tends to pose to all returning champions, is whether they still want to be there when it gets hard. The answer to that one, at least, appears settled.
What is being asked of them now is simpler: show up, compete, let the match happen. Venus, at 46, is doing that. Serena, at 44, coming off a knee injury from Wimbledon and a mixed doubles run that ended only days ago, is doing the same.
Friday night, Flushing Meadows. It is a story the US Open has been telling since 1997. It is still being told.
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