Venus Williams’ return to tennis came to an abrupt end in the last 16 of the ATP\/WTA DC Open on Thursday, with the veteran American losing to Poland’s Magdalena Frech in straight sets.<\/p>\n
The 45-year-old seven-time Grand Slam singles champion, playing this week for the first time in 16 months, had become the oldest woman to win a WTA match in more than two decades with Tuesday’s first round win over Peyton Stearns<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Williams<\/a> found the going harder against fifth seed Frech<\/a> in Thursday’s third round clash, losing 6-2, 6-2<\/a> in 1hr 13min.<\/p>\n Frech will face third seed Elena Rybakina<\/a> in Friday’s quarter-finals.<\/p>\n Frech seized the early initiative with a dominant first set performance, breaking Williams in the fifth game to take a 3-2 lead.<\/p>\n The Pole duly held for a 4-2 lead and then broke again when Williams’ serve unravelled in the seventh game.<\/p>\n The American double-faulted twice in quick succession to hand Frech three break points, and she converted the first to go 5-2 up, before holding to close out the set.<\/p>\n Williams was soon in trouble in the second set, blasting a routine smash well beyond the baseline to give Frech two break points in the first game.<\/p>\n Frech pounced on that chance to grab the break for a 1-0 lead and then held for 2-0.<\/p>\n Williams held for 2-1 but was unable to threaten on Frech’s serve in the fourth game as the world number 24 took a 3-1 lead.<\/p>\n Frech’s shot variation continued to cause Williams problems in the next game and two wild long forehands from the veteran saw her surrender another break to go 4-1 down.<\/p>\n With the game slipping away, Williams loosened up and began to find her range to break back for 4-2.<\/p>\n The rally was fleeting as Frech broke again in the seventh for a 5-2 lead and then held to seal victory.<\/p>\n In other games on Thursday, Canada’s Leylah Fernandez<\/a>, the 2021 US Open finalist, upset top seed Jessica Pegula<\/a> 6-3, 1-6, 7-5<\/a> to move into a quarter-final meeting with Taylor Townsend<\/a> on Friday.\u00a0Townsend took down sixth seed Sofia Kenin<\/a> 6-3, 6-0<\/a>.<\/p>\n Britain’s Emma Raducanu<\/a> continued her impressive run of recent form with a 6-4, 6-2<\/a> defeat of Japan’s Naomi Osaka<\/a> and will face Greece’s Maria Sakkari<\/a> on Friday.<\/p>\n In the men’s draw, fourth seed Ben Shelton<\/a> moved into the quarter-finals after beating Canadian 15th seed Gabriel Diallo<\/a> 6-3, 6-2.<\/a><\/p>\n Shelton will next face compatriot\u00a0Frances Tiafoe<\/a> in the last eight, with the sixth seed defeating ninth-seeded Italian\u00a0Flavio Cobolli<\/a> 6-1, 6-4.<\/a><\/p>\n Top seed Taylor Fritz<\/a> then joined his fellow Americans in the last eight with a 6-3, 6-4<\/a> win over Matteo Arnaldi<\/a>.<\/p>\n Australia’s Alex de Minaur<\/a> is also into the quarter-finals after downing Jiri Lehecka<\/a> 7-6 (4), 6-7 (6), 6-4<\/a> earlier in the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venus Williams’ return to tennis came to an abrupt end in the last 16 of the ATP\/WTA DC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-290198","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114913113994062460","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}