Williams Sisters Return to US Open Doubles Draw
NEW YORK – Serena and Venus Williams are heading back to the US Open doubles draw, and the scriptwriters have wasted no time.
Their first-round opponents? Maya Joint and Hao-Ching Chan – the same Joint who stunned Serena at Wimbledon and left the 44-year-old limping out of London with a damaged knee and a doubles withdrawal alongside her sister.
Now the rematch lands in New York, with a twist: two legends on one side of the net, the upstart who felled one of them on the other.
A Wild Card Return with History Attached
The United States Tennis Association confirmed that the Williams sisters have received a wild card into the women’s doubles main draw, a familiar late-summer ritual for two players who helped define this tournament. They have lifted the US Open doubles trophy twice, and their names still carry the weight of a final weekend, even if their recent results say otherwise.
Their last appearance as a team in this event came in 2022, when they bowed out in the first round to Linda Nosková and Lucie Hradecká. That loss felt like a closing chapter. This one feels more like an epilogue nobody quite expected.
They reunited on court earlier this month at the Cincinnati Masters, their first doubles match together since that 2022 US Open. The rust was obvious, the fight familiar. They went down in a first-round thriller to Marta Kostyuk and Peyton Stearns, but the noise, the energy, the instinctive understanding between them were all still there.
Now they bring that back to Arthur Ashe territory.
Wimbledon Scars, New York Stage
The draw’s most intriguing subplot comes straight from Wimbledon. Invited as a singles wild card, Serena fell in the first round to Joint, the younger player seizing the moment as Serena injured her knee and later pulled out of doubles with Venus.
That defeat cut short what was meant to be a nostalgic doubles run on grass. In New York, the stakes are different but the memory lingers. Joint returns to face not just Serena again, but the full force of the Williams partnership, with Chan’s doubles pedigree alongside her.
Both sisters already have miles in their legs this year in New York. Serena teamed up with Carlos Alcaraz in mixed doubles and pushed through to the quarterfinals, another reminder that her competitive edge hasn’t dulled, even as the body protests. Venus, meanwhile, exited early in singles, falling in the first round to Sofia Kenin.
So the doubles court becomes their shared stage again, as it has so many times across decades.
A Stacked Field at the Top
The draw around them is hardly soft.
Taylor Townsend and Kateřina Siniaková lead the field as the No. 1 seeds, a pairing built for hard courts and long weeks. They carry the sting of last year’s final defeat to Gabriela Dabrowski and Erin Routliffe, a loss that has hung over their return as the team to beat.
This time, though, the defending champions are split.
Routliffe lines up with Aldila Sutjiadi as the No. 9 seeds, a new partnership with proven credentials scattered across the tour. Dabrowski joins forces with Luisa Stefani and slots in as the No. 2 seed, a combination that looks built for deep runs on paper.
The Williams sisters sit outside that seeding structure, wild cards in every sense. No ranking protection, no guarantees, only reputation and memory and the possibility of one more run.
The draw says they start against Joint and Chan. The atmosphere, once they walk out in New York, will decide how far the story goes.
