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Venus Williams, 45, becomes oldest WTA winner since 2004<\/p>\n
Williams is the oldest woman to win a tour-level singles match since the 47-year-old Martina Navratilova.<\/p>\n
Stats Perform Video<\/p>\n
The match was over, the smile was beaming and here was Venus Williams \u2013 the seven-time Grand Slam champion, the 45-year-old icon of tennis, the soon-to-be bride \u2013 telling jokes about health insurance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to come back because they informed me earlier this year I\u2019m on COBRA,\u201d she said, giggling through her on-court interview with Rennae Stubbs after a what-did-we-just-watch 6-3, 6-4 victory over world No. 35 Peyton Stearns at the Mubadala Citi DC Open. \u201cSo I was like, \u2018I gotta get my benefits!\u2019 You guys know what it\u2019s like. I\u2019m always at the doctor so I\u00a0need\u00a0this insurance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It’s a great line. And the funniest part about it is, when Williams entered this tournament as a wild card having not played on the WTA Tour since March 2024 and without winning an official match in 709 days, there was no clear reason why she would play at all.<\/p>\n
Williams admits that she holds her cards close to the vest on purpose. She never officially retired. She never closed the door. In her last few years on tour, the results weren\u2019t good. Injuries piled up, as they tend to do for athletes who approach their 40s.<\/p>\n
So was entering this tournament out of nowhere a one-off or a comeback? She wouldn\u2019t say.<\/p>\n
Who cares. What she produced was magical, even if it\u2019s just for one memorable night.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were so many times I wanted to coast and kind of chill,\u201d Williams said. \u201cDo you know how hard it is to play tennis? You don\u2019t know how much work goes into this. It\u2019s 9-to-5 except you\u2019re running the whole time and then lifting weights and then you\u2019re repeating it the next day.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
But her support team wanted her to play at least one more time. Her fianc\u00e9, the Danish-Italian actor Andrea Preti, had never seen her play.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And my goodness did she deliver something special, the kind of thing only tennis can provide.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Sabrina Ionescu praises this female tennis player<\/p>\n
WNBA star Sabrina Ionescu on why she thinks Coco Gauff deserves more recognition in tennis.<\/p>\n
Samantha Cardona-Norberg<\/p>\n
Williams is not the oldest women\u2019s player to win a match on the WTA Tour. That would be Martina Navratilova winning a first-round match at Wimbledon in 2004. But given how little she had played recently and who she was up against Tuesday \u2013 a very good 23-year-old who wasn\u2019t even born when Williams won her fourth major at the 2001 US Open \u2013 it\u2019s arguably the most stunning result of the year in any sport.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How did she do it? She served incredibly well with nine aces, executed an incredibly-aggressive game plan that made Stearns uncomfortable and baited her into too many unforced errors.<\/p>\n
Is it sustainable? We\u2019ll see. Williams plays the No. 5 seed, Magdalena Frech, on Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The more important question is whether this win will encourage Williams to keep going and perhaps even request a wild card to the US Open, which would very likely be granted given her stature in the history of the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Had Williams been defeated soundly Tuesday, it might have been controversial to give a 45-year-old a pass into the US Open field. But now, it kind of seems like a no-brainer if that\u2019s what she wants to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m just here for now, and who knows?\u201d she said in her pre-tournament press conference. \u201cMaybe there’s more. At the moment, I’m focused just on this. I haven’t played in a year. There is no doubt I can play tennis, but obviously coming back to play matches, it takes time to get in the swing of things. I definitely feel I’ll play well. I’m still the same player. I’m a big hitter. I hit big. This is my brand.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Everyone got a good laugh out of that, including Williams. But when she got out on the court, it turned out to be true. She hit big enough to knock the No. 35 player in the world off the court. She\u2019s probably not going to contend for another Grand Slam, but if you can do that, you belong.\u00a0<\/p>\n
None of us are truly timeless, but Williams made a heck of an argument in the other direction Tuesday. At 45, she looked as fit and powerful as she had in years. Whether it\u2019s the beginning of something or one last hurrah before the end, the fact she was willing to put herself out there at all was a gift to tennis and fans who have watched her play pro tournaments for 31 years.\u00a0Even if it\u2019s just for the health insurance, Williams\u2019 presence can still elevate a tennis tournament. And even if Tuesday was the last match she ever wins, delivering that moment was something everybody who cares about the sport should be thankful they got to witness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venus Williams, 45, becomes oldest WTA winner since 2004 Williams is the oldest woman to win a tour-level…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[448,449,64,63,447,455,21099,21101,1791,134,3389,21104,322,456,44,16804,1721,21102,323,451,439,21100,21103,85,635,747,39,1785,1807,441,12820,11549,819],"class_list":["post-20321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-affiliate","tag-arts","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-celebrities-u0026-entertainment-news","tag-championships","tag-competitions","tag-content","tag-entertainment","tag-international","tag-international-sports-competitions","tag-local","tag-local-affiliate-arts-u0026-entertainment","tag-news","tag-open","tag-opinion","tag-opinion-content","tag-overall","tag-overall-positive","tag-positive","tag-racquet","tag-racquet-sports","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-tennis","tag-top-stories","tag-u-s","tag-u-s-open-tennis-championships","tag-u0026","tag-venus","tag-venus-williams","tag-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}