NEW YORK (AP) — It was four years ago that Serena Williams announced, in a poignant Vogue essay, that she was “evolving away from tennis.” The headline used the dramatic word “farewell,” though Williams presciently noted she disliked the word “retirement.”
Whatever the wording, though, the message was clear: Daughter Olympia really wanted to be a big sister. And Williams knew she couldn’t accomplish that and still play tennis the way she wanted. She could not, in other words, have it all.
“Something’s got to give,” Williams wrote, in words that resonated with many women, in sports and beyond.
Well, Olympia got her little sister. And now, she may be calling the shots again, because Mom is fulfilling another of Olympia’s requests: that she play doubles again at the U.S. Open with Aunt Venus.
“You need to play with Auntie VeVe,” 9-year-old Olympia told her, Serena Williams said this week on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“She said it so clear and so calm,” Williams said. “She’s like my mom, she doesn’t really talk a lot, but when she does talk, you listen. And I was like, ‘OK.’”
And so Serena and Venus, a superstar doubles duo if ever there was one, will take the court Friday evening at the U.S. Open as a team, for the first time in four years.
“Super excited about it,” Venus said this week — after her singles match wrapped up at the ungodly hour of 2 a.m.
It’s a tournament where Serena won six singles titles, and Venus won two, one of them against Serena, who returned the favor the following year. That 2001 victory for the elder sister came a full quarter-century ago — which is enough to give fans goose bumps that this partnership is alive, at ages 44 and 46.
“I’m happy for them,” said longtime tennis fan Nonie Green, of Arlington, Virginia, as she waited out a rain shower between matches earlier this week. “Father Time is undefeated. But I’m happy for them, even if they don’t win.”
As a doubles team, the sisters won two of their 14 Grand Slam titles at the U.S. Open — in 1999 and 2009. They last played together at Flushing Meadows in 2022, losing in the first round. That was a few weeks after Serena penned her Vogue essay. (This year, they had to scrap their appearance at Wimbledon because of Serena’s knee injury, but they played in Cincinnati last month.)
Now, fans are happy to witness any “evolving” back to tennis that the sisters care to do. The doubles match, unsurprisingly, has a marquee spot: the night session, in Arthur Ashe Stadium. With cocktails, a DJ and all the rest of a U.S. Open evening spectacle.
They’ll face Maya Joint of Australia and Chan Hao-Ching of Taiwan. It was Joint who defeated Serena in their recent Wimbledon singles match. But whether the sisters win is not, for many, the point. The point is that they’re back in the spotlight.
Green, the fan from Virginia, did acknowledge that if it were up to her, at the same age, she would probably be watching, or commentating, rather than playing. But she said she loved how happy Serena Williams looked when playing mixed doubles with Carlos Alcaraz, early in the tournament.
Even more importantly: “They are good for women — and they are good for Black women,” said Green, 58, who is Black.
Green recalled something a former pastor had told her: “Even the sky is not the limit. You can go beyond it.”
Which sounds just like the lesson Serena Williams now wants to teach her daughters — and why, four years after stepping away from tennis, she is back, at least in doubles and probably, she said on “Good Morning America,” in singles again soon.
“I just really want my children to see me play at a different age,” she said.
“I hope to show them that anything is possible. You can do anything at any age as long as you work hard and put some effort and dedication behind it.”
The daughters — now two of them — will surely be watching on Friday night as their mom, and Auntie VeVe, take center stage.
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