Williams Sisters Reunite in US Open Doubles, Chasing One More Night on Arthur Ashe

Serena and Venus Williams will walk onto Arthur Ashe Stadium together Friday night, not before 7 p.m., to open their US Open women's doubles campaign against 14th-seeded Chan Hao-Ching and Maya Joint. According to the tournament's Friday order of play, it is their first Grand Slam doubles match as a pair since a first-round loss at the same tournament in 2022, and it comes in a year neither sister expected to still be playing.

Serena, who turns 45 later this month, and Venus, 46, accepted a doubles wild card into the main draw, one of several the sisters have collected across a season that has turned into an improvised farewell tour. They are two of the most decorated doubles partners in tennis history: 14 Grand Slam women's doubles titles together, including the US Open in 1999 and 2009, and a 14-0 record in major finals as a team. They first teamed up in 1997.

A comeback that began at Queen's Club

Serena announced in June that she would return to competition after nearly four years away, having said in 2022 that she was "evolving away from tennis" rather than formally retiring. She played her first match back at Queen's Club, then took a doubles wild card into the HSBC Championships that ended early when her partner was injured. At Wimbledon she entered singles and lost in the first round to Joint — Friday's opponent — while a knee injury forced her out of the doubles draw she had hoped to play with Venus.

The sisters got their reunion in August instead, at the Cincinnati Open, where they lost their opening match to Marta Kostyuk and Peyton Stearns 6-2, 1-6, [10-8]. Venus had described the buildup to Wimbledon as a disappointment that "didn't end up the way we had hoped," and said afterward she was hopeful the pair could "pick up right where we left off."

Venus has run her own parallel comeback this year, returning at the D.C. Open, where she beat Peyton Stearns to become, at the time, the oldest woman to win a WTA Tour-level match since Martina Navratilova in 2004, before losing in the second round to Magdalena Frech. She also carries a singles wild card into this year's US Open as the tournament's oldest women's entrant since Renée Richards played at 47 in 1981; she lost her first-round match to Sofia Kenin in a contest that stretched past midnight earlier this week.

Serena's warmup with Alcaraz

Before Friday's doubles opener, Serena had already been back on Ashe once this tournament, pairing with Carlos Alcaraz in the US Open's revamped mixed doubles event. They beat Erin Routliffe and Lloyd Glasspool in the opening round, Serena unleashing a 120-mile-per-hour ace that drew gasps from the crowd, before losing in the quarterfinals to Flavio Cobolli and Belinda Bencic. It marked her first competitive appearance at Flushing Meadows since her tearful third-round exit in 2022.

"Kinda chic to play with your sister in the US Open," Venus Williams said of Friday's reunion. "I definitely will be focused on that and super excited about it."

Serena described the return to the biggest stadium in tennis in similar terms. "I never expected to be back on this court, so it's just a really cool moment," she said. "I never thought this would happen."

A crowd that remembers 1999

The night session at Ashe routinely draws the loudest crowds of the fortnight, and organizers moved the Williams match into that slot knowing it would sell out regardless of ranking. Neither sister currently holds a WTA doubles ranking high enough to have entered the draw on merit; both are playing on wild cards granted, in USTA's telling, in recognition of a partnership that predates most of this year's field. Chan Hao-Ching, 32, has played doubles professionally since before Joint, 20, was born, and reached a Wimbledon women's doubles final in 2017, though never with Joint, whom she paired with only last month.

Chan and Joint are a newly formed pairing themselves, having joined forces only last month, but they arrive with results: a final in Memphis, a second-round run in Toronto and a quarterfinal in Cincinnati. Joint's win over Serena in Wimbledon singles adds an edge to a matchup that has been placed in the marquee Friday night slot at Ashe, a scheduling decision that reflects how much box-office pull the sisters still carry regardless of ranking, one that continued a busy stretch of tournament play this week at Flushing Meadows.

• Serena and Venus Williams: 14 Grand Slam doubles titles together, undefeated in major finals
• Two US Open doubles titles as a pair — 1999 and 2009
• First played doubles together in 1997; last played a major together in 2022
• Cincinnati Open tune-up this August ended in a first-round loss

A win Friday would send the Williamses into the second round against the winners of a match between Fossa Huergo/Korpatsch and Maleckova/Skoch, with No. 4 seeds Hsieh Su-Wei and Jelena Ostapenko potentially waiting in the third round — a draw that offers no guarantee the reunion extends beyond a match or two. Neither sister has said whether Friday marks a one-off appearance or the start of a longer stretch together; Venus has said only that the pair would "love" to keep playing majors together "so we'll see what happens."

What happens next

For a tournament otherwise dominated by the sport's current generation — Carlos Alcaraz working through the third round, Aryna Sabalenka defending her women's title, Jannik Sinner among the favorites — Friday night belongs to two players whose combined age is 90 and whose partnership predates the professional careers of most of the field. A victory keeps that thread alive into the second week. A loss would not diminish what has already been, by any measure, an unlikely and closely watched return to the sport's biggest stages for both sisters this year.