Tennis: Serena and Venus fall in Cincinnati doubles return

Four years between matches

Serena and Venus Williams played doubles together on Monday night in Mason, Ohio, for the first time since 2022. Peyton Stearns and Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk beat them 6-2, 1-6, 1-0 (8) in the Cincinnati Open first round.

The match tiebreak decided it. Stearns and Kostyuk sprinted to 6-0 in the first-to-10 that replaces a third set in doubles. The sisters hauled it back to 8-7, then 9-8. Venus Williams then served a double fault to end the match.

“I thought it was fun,” Serena Williams said. “I thought it was special. We kicked off a little rust in the middle of the match and just, you know, starting to feel it. I didn’t 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.”

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Serena’s third doubles match of the year

Serena Williams, 44, came back to the tour this season after three years away. Monday counted as only her third doubles outing of 2026. She won a match alongside Canada’s Victoria Mboko at a Wimbledon warm-up event in London, though the pair could not contest the next round after Mboko got hurt. A first-round loss with Karolina Muchova in Berlin followed.

Her singles ledger reads thinner still. One match, a first-round defeat to Australia’s Maya Joint at Wimbledon, where the 23-time major singles champion picked up the injury that kept her out of the doubles draw with her sister. She has not said whether she will enter the US Open, which starts on 30 August.

Venus is still hunting a win

Venus Williams, 46, stands at 3-9 in doubles and 0-10 in singles for 2026. She exited the Cincinnati singles draw in the first round earlier in the week.

Put together, the sisters own 30 major singles titles and 14 women’s doubles majors, every one of those doubles crowns claimed as a pair. They have never lost a Grand Slam doubles final. Monday sat a long way from that record, and neither of them seemed to mind.

“It’s our first time playing together in forever,” Venus Williams said. “It was great for us to get out there and do it.”

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