Jul 23, 2025, 06:00 PM ET<\/p>\n
MASON, Ohio — Venus Williams<\/a>‘ return to professional tennis<\/a> will not just be a one-tournament visit: She was awarded a wild-card entry on Wednesday for next month’s Cincinnati Open.<\/p>\n The 45-year-old Williams is participating in her first event in more than a year this week at the DC Open and won first-round matches in both singles<\/a> and doubles<\/a>.<\/p>\n Editor’s Picks<\/p>\n 2 Related<\/p>\n Her 6-3, 6-4 victory over 23-year-old Peyton Stearns<\/a> on Tuesday night made Williams the second-oldest woman to win a tour-level singles match. Martina Navratilova<\/a> was 47 when she picked up her last singles victory in 2004.<\/p>\n Williams has won seven Grand Slam singles titles — five at Wimbledon and two at the US Open — plus 14 more in doubles with her sister Serena<\/a> and two in mixed doubles.<\/p>\n She’ll play Magdalena Frech<\/a> of Poland on Thursday in Washington.<\/p>\n The Cincinnati Open begins on Aug. 5 and is a hard-court tuneup for the US Open.<\/p>\n Caty McNally<\/a>, the only player to take a set off champion Iga Swiatek<\/a> at Wimbledon, also was given a wild card for Cincinnati on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jul 23, 2025, 06:00 PM ET MASON, Ohio — Venus Williams‘ return to professional tennis will not just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-32511","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\/32511","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=32511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}