Seven-time Grand Slam winner Venus Williams defeated 6-2, 6-2 by Emiliana Arango in the first round of Cincinnati Open.<\/p>\n
Published On 15 Aug 202615 Aug 2026<\/p>\n
Venus Williams\u2019s losing streak in singles play has reached 13 matches.<\/p>\n
The seven-time major champion was defeated 6-2, 6-2 by Emiliana Arango late on Friday in the first round of the Cincinnati Open.<\/p>\n
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The 46-year-old Williams received a wild-card entry to the WTA 1000 event. She has not won a singles match since July 2025.<\/p>\n
Arango, a 25-year-old qualifier from Colombia ranked 95th, needed 1 hour, 5 minutes to defeat Williams on the grandstand court at Lindner Tennis Center.<\/p>\n
Williams had her serve broken in the first game of the match and faced an uphill battle the rest of the way. Arango was 4 of 5 on converting break points and won 71 percent of her first-serve points.<\/p>\n
Williams was unable to convert on her lone break opportunity and was only 41 percent on first-serve points.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat kind of eased my nerves a little bit of having maybe a little bit of breathing room. And then I think I just did a good job of staying on it, trying to make her play as much as possible,\u201d Arango said about getting ahead early.<\/p>\n
Arango will face No 7 seed and defending Cincinnati champion Iga Swiatek in the second round.<\/p>\n
Williams\u2019s last singles victory came last year in Washington, when she defeated Peyton Stearns.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that at all times I was really controlling the point, but unfortunately didn\u2019t finish it the way I wanted to,\u201d said Williams, who is making her 11th appearance in the tournament. \u201cThe encouraging part is that I\u2019m controlling the shots, but I have to just get a little more consistent on that last part.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams will remain in Cincinnati to play doubles with her sister, Serena, after they received a wild-card entry. They last played doubles together at the 2022 US Open.<\/p>\n
The Williams sisters were slated to play doubles at Wimbledon before an injury to Serena. They will play Marta Kostyuk and Peyton Stearns in the first round.<\/p>\n
The doubles portion of the tournament starts on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited and hope that we can both go into it fresh, on our toes and ready. I\u2019ll be preparing for that,\u201d Venus Williams said.<\/p>\n
Venus is also slated to play mixed doubles at the US Open later this month with Alexander Bublik.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seven-time Grand Slam winner Venus Williams defeated 6-2, 6-2 by Emiliana Arango in the first round of Cincinnati…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":739946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[50,217,101,118,56,54,158,55,3544],"class_list":["post-739945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-news","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=739945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/739946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}