NEW YORK — Four years after they last took the court together in New York, Serena and Venus Williams returned to the US Open as a doubles team on Friday evening and took part in one of the most compelling matches of the tournament.<\/p>\n
Most of the Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd left disappointed by the result.<\/p>\n
Still, fans couldn’t be disappointed by the hard-fought, back-and-forth match — a three-hour classic decided by a super tiebreak. Chan Hao-Ching and Maya Joint ultimately pulled it out 6-3, 6-7 (6), 7-6 [7] to advance to the second round, spoiling what would have been a momentous comeback for the 14-time Grand Slam doubles champions.<\/p>\n
After a relatively straightforward first set for Chan and Joint, Venus and Serena gave the New York crowd reason to get loud with a spirited second-set effort.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Both teams held serve through the first 12 games, and it remained even through the first half of the tiebreak. A Serena backhand volley winner gave the Williamses the 5-3 advantage, and after Chan responded with a winner at net, Venus’ backhand winner gave them their second set point. An unreturned Joint serve cut it to 6-5, before Serena double-faulted on the fourth set point.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Two points later, on the fifth set point, Joint hit a forehand long to give them the set and ensure that it would be another long night in Ashe.<\/p>\n
“I think the crowd is pretty much what we expected,” Joint said of the fervent pro-Williams crowd. “We expected a full stadium, and everyone cheering them, and it was pretty much that. But the atmosphere is super special. You’re not really going to get that again with many other players.”<\/p>\n
Though Serena and Venus carried all the momentum into the decider, Joint and Chan jumped out to a 4-1 lead. The Americans won the next three games to tie it, and four consecutive holds brought it to a super tiebreak.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Venus and Serena got halfway to the finish line in a hurry, taking a 5-0 lead, before costly errors doomed their comeback. Serena and Venus hit consecutive shots into the net, and at 6-3 Venus double faulted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Joint and Chan would win six of the next seven points, and Chan’s volley winner at 9-7 clinched a match that will likely go down in history.<\/p>\n
“I felt relieved,” Joint said of how she felt after the match. “I was very nervous. I was very stressed during the match, especially the second and third sets. Especially at the net, my movement, I felt like I wasn’t really doing anything, and I didn’t go for a volley. I was hesitant.<\/p>\n
“I felt very, very relieved when it was over.”<\/p>\n
Chan credited Venus and Serena for making critical adjustments after the first set to get back into the match.<\/p>\n
“I think we started very aggressive in the first set,” she said, “and even with the return game, we tried to be aggressive — also at the net. And I think they switched something. They started to go [down the] line more in the second set.”<\/p>\n
It’s the second super-tiebreak loss for Serena and Venus in as many matches since reuniting their doubles partnership on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz. In their first match together, in Cincinnati last month, Venus and Serena lost to Marta Kostyuk and Peyton Stearns 6-2, 1-6, [10-8].<\/p>\n
Chan and Joint will play unseeded Tamara Korpatsch and Nicole Fossa Huergo in the second round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK — Four years after they last took the court together in New York, Serena and Venus…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,1602,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-760872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-text","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760872","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=760872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}