15-year-old Gauff beats Venus Williams at Wimbledon<\/a><\/p>\nWilliams has been winning at tennis for decades. Her pro debut came when she was 14. Her first\u00a0Grand Slam title\u00a0came at Wimbledon in 2000, less than a month after her 20th birthday.<\/p>\n
She accumulated four major singles trophies before Stearns was born and eventually wound up with seven, five at Wimbledon and two at the U.S. Open, plus another 14 in women\u2019s doubles \u2014 all with her sister Serena \u2014 and two in mixed doubles.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have so much respect for her to come back here and play, win or lose. That takes a lot of guts to step back onto court, especially with what she\u2019s done for the sport,\u201d said Stearns, who is ranked 35th and won NCAA singles and team titles at the University of Texas. \u201cYou have a lot behind you. You have accomplished a lot. And there is a lot of pressure on her and to kind of upkeep that at this age. So massive credit to her for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were challenges along the way for Williams, none more public than the diagnosis in 2011 of Sj\u00f6gren\u2019s syndrome, an energy-sapping auto-immune disease that can cause joint pain.<\/p>\n
More recent was the pain from fibroids \u2014 noncancerous growths \u2014 and shortly before the DC Open, Williams said: \u201cWhere I am at this year is so much different (from) where I was at last year. It\u2019s night and day, being able to be here and prepare for the tournament as opposed to preparing for surgery.\u201d<\/p>\n
As thrilled as the spectators \u2014 \u201cWho I love, and they love me,\u201d Williams said \u2014 were to be able to watch, and pull, for her under the lights Tuesday, other players were rather excited about it, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI commend her so much for being out here,\u201d said Taylor Townsend.<\/p>\n
Naomi Osaka\u2019s take: \u201cShe\u2019s, like, the queen. There\u2019s a royal air around her.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s one of the best athletes of all time,\u201d Frances Tiafoe said. \u201cHer and her sister, they\u2019re not only great for the women\u2019s game, not only great for women\u2019s sports, but they are so iconic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet, there were some on social media who wondered whether it made sense for the tournament to award a wild-card entry to Williams instead of an up-and-coming player.<\/p>\n
DC Open chairman Mark Ein said it took him about two seconds to respond \u201cOf course\u201d when Williams\u2019 representative reached out in April to ask whether a spot in the field might be a possibility.<\/p>\n
A reporter wanted to know Tuesday whether Williams took any satisfaction from proving doubters wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, because I\u2019m not here for anyone else except for me. And I also have nothing to prove. Zip. Zero. I\u2019m here for me, because I want to be here,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd proving anyone wrong or thinking about anyone has never gotten me a win and has never gotten me a loss.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n Donate now<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 There are plenty of reasons why this particular victory by\u00a0Venus Williams\u00a0in this\u00a0particular tennis match\u00a0\u2014 just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-31829","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}