{"id":85597,"date":"2025-07-23T09:43:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T09:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/85597\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T09:43:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T09:43:11","slug":"tennis-legend-venus-williams-wins-first-singles-match-since-2023-delivers-nine-aces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/85597\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennis legend Venus Williams wins first singles match since 2023, delivers nine aces"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"untitled-design-2025-07-22t193932-143.png\"<\/p>\n

Getty Images<\/p>\n

Tennis legend Venus Williams is back. The 45-year-old former world No. 1 player won her first singles match in nearly two years, defeating the world No. 35 Peyton Stearns, 6-3, 6-4, to reach the second round of the DC Open.<\/p>\n

At 45 years and 35 days, Williams is the oldest woman to win a WTA tour-level match since Martina Navratilova did so at Wimbledon in 2004 at 47, according to CBS Sports Research. Williams served up nine aces in the match, some reaching 110 mph, according to the Associated Press<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Check out the moment of her special victory, here:<\/p>\n

Williams didn’t look very rusty in her return to action. When she wasn’t acing serves, she showed some incredible movement, going end-to-end to return difficult shots that many 45-year-olds could not.<\/p>\n

Williams joked that she had to return to the court for the insurance benefits, since she’s “always at the doctors.”<\/p>\n

“I had to come back for the insurance, because they informed me this year that I’m on COBRA.” Williams said after the match. “So it’s, like, I got to get my benefits on.”<\/p>\n

Williams has registered five Wimbledon and two US Open titles over her career, and she was excited to return for this event in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

“There’s something truly special about D.C.: the energy, the fans, the history,” Williams said in a statement,\u00a0via USA Today<\/a>. “This city has always shown me so much love, and I can’t wait to compete there again.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getty Images Tennis legend Venus Williams is back. The 45-year-old former world No. 1 player won her first…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":85598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[62,1464,67,132,68,46604],"class_list":{"0":"post-85597","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-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us","13":"tag-venus-williams"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114901903215563317","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}