The 2025 Venus Williams comeback tour is rolling into Cincinnati.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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<\/a> and her thoughts on health insurance<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Caty McNally also gets a wild card<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n