(August 25, 2025) Venus Williams has played her last match, at least for this year. The seven-time singles major champion, playing in her first match at a major tournament in two years lost in the first round of the US Open to No. 11 Karolina Muchova 6-3, 2-6, 6-1 on Monday night. Williams had not won a match in New York since 2019.
At 45, Williams was the oldest person to play at the US Open since 1981. Williams won her first major of her career at the US Open in 2000.
Williams may not have won the match, but she won the hearts of the spectators from the very first ball hit.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a crowd that much on my side,” said Williams. “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.”
It was at the US Open many years ago that she was diagnosed with Sjögren’s syndrome, an energy-sapping auto-immune disease that can cause joint pain.
“Oh, what did I prove to myself?” Williams said during her news conference. “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.” It was when she said these words that she began to tear up, and the moderator, stopped the questions and she got up and left the room.
“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 mounted a comeback of sorts back in July getting a few wild cards from tournaments in D.C., Montreal and Cincinnati.
“She’s such a legend of our sport,” 2023 French Open runner-up Muchova said, an honor “to share a court with her.”
Muchova, a 29-year-old from the Czechia, made it to the semifinals in New York in the last two years.
“I definitely had a bit of a slow start, but it’s not really a bad thing, “ Williams said.” I just haven’t played a lot of matches, so I’m still finding everything.
“I think I had a Love-40 game, and I was, like, Oh, no, not a double break (smiling). Thankfully that was avoided, at least in that set. And I was really able to start to dial into my game.
“I didn’t win today, but I’m very proud of how I played.”
“The level of my game has come up so much since D.C. I tried as hard as I could to throw off any rust, but at the end of the day, there’s only so much that can really be accomplished in three or four matches.
“My goal is to do what I want to do. I wanted to be here this summer. I’m so grateful for all the folks who gave me a wild card. They could have said, Hey, listen, you’ve been gone too long, you haven’t won a lot of matches in the last few years. I wasn’t lucky with my health and with injuries.
“But there were a lot of people who believed in me in these tournaments. I’m very grateful to have had that chance and that opportunity to make good on it and have a chance to really strike the ball.
“I play an exciting brand of tennis. It’s a lot of fun to go literally hog wild out there and hit as hard as I can. I’m happiest when I can just hit hard.
“I think I played some matches in Cincinnati and D.C. where I didn’t really understand how to control myself yet. So I think today was a lot better measure of, like, okay, you don’t have to hit this one as hard as you can. Play a smart shot, then go for the next one, you know (laughing).
“You never stop learning. I learned so much. I’m still learning about myself. When I think about the match I played against her in 2020, I was so uncomfortable. I wasn’t well. I was in so much pain. Today it’s night and day how much better I felt, so I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to play in feeling better, and at that rate, have a real chance. “
“There were just some shots I missed that — those kind of shots are about feel and less about training, and those are the kinds of things that I just couldn’t stave off today.
“I had a lot of returns. I was right there, and it’s about the reps. Those are things that I just couldn’t do today. It wasn’t my fault (laughing), the best way I can put it. “
What does the tennis future hold for her, only she knows.
