The 2025 Venus Williams comeback tour is rolling into Cincinnati.

On Wednesday, July 23, it was announced that the seven-time Grand Slam champion — who returned to action this week at the Mubadala Citi DC Open after 18 months off the Hologic WTA tour — has received a wild card for the upcoming Cincinnati Open, a WTA 1000 event that has expanded from 56 players in the draw to 96.

After winning her first-round match in the doubles draw alongside partner Hailey Baptiste, the 45-year-old stunned World No. 35 Peyton Stearns, 6-3, 6-4, to become the oldest player to win a tour-level singles match since a 47-year-old Martina Navratilova won a match at Wimbledon in 2004. Feeling relaxed and at ease after the thrilling straight-sets win, Williams delighted the crowd with news of her engagement and her thoughts on health insurance. 

Venus and Baptiste were ousted in the doubles field by second-seeded Taylor Townsend and Zhang Shuai in a tightly-contested three-set match, and now Williams will turn her attention back to singles, where she’ll square off against fifth-seeded Magdalena Frech in the Round of 16 on Thursday, July 24.

The former World No. 1 has played the Cincinnati Open — which has undergone a remarkable renovation and transformation ahead of this year’s tournament — 10 times in her career, reaching the semifinals in 2012 and the quarterfinals in 2019.

Caty McNally also gets a wild card

Venus wasn’t the only American to receive a wild card into the main draw of the final WTA 1000 event before the US Open. 23-year-old Caty McNally, a Cincinnati native who went to high school a mere 20 minutes from the Lindner Family Tennis Center, will also be in the field. The World No. 129, who was the only player to take a set off of eventual Wimbledon champion Iga Swiatek at the All England Club earlier this month, is coming off a title at the WTA125 Hall of Fame Open in Newport. McNally will be making her fifth appearance at the tournament, and her first since 2022.

The field at the Cincinnati Open is loaded, as per usual, and will be headlined by the top two players in the world, No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka and No. 2 Coco Gauff.