Venus and Serena Williams fall in first round of Cincinnati Open in first doubles match together since 2022

AP Photo/Kareem Elgazzar

The Williams sisters were back together again on Monday night in Cincinnati. 

Things just didn’t go that well on the court. 

Venus and Serena Williams reunited to play in their first official doubles match together since 2022 at the Cincinnati Open on Monday. But Cincinnati native Peyton Stearns and partner Marta Kostyuk picked up a 6-2, 1-6, 10-8 win to end the Williams sisters’ run before it could even begin.

Kostyuk and Stearns rolled to an easy win in the first set, and looked well on their way to knocking off the Williams sisters in straight sets. But Venus and Serena stormed back to pick up a dominant 6-1 win and force a deciding set.

But that was all the Williamses could manage to slow Stearns and Kostyuk down. The duo won six straight points in the tiebreaker to get things started, and then held on to secure the win after the Williams’ pushed things back to 8-7 briefly.

Venus committed a double fault on the final serve to eventually give Kostyuk and Stearns the point they needed to end the match.

The sisters were supposed to play together in Wimbledon earlier this year, but Serena ended up withdrawing from that part of the tournament after she sustained a knee injury in her first-round singles loss to Maya Joint. 

Serena, now 44, announced in June that she was coming out of retirement to start playing again. She partnered up with Canadian Victoria Mboko first at the HSBC Championships as a doubles wild-card, and then she played in her first singles match since the 2022 US Open at Wimbledon. Joint beat Williams there, ending an 11-match skid for her at the time.

Venus, 46, earned a wild-card entry into the Cincinnati Open singles tournament. But Emiliana Arango beat her in straight sets on Friday, which marked Venus’ 13th straight singles loss. She’s not won a singles match since July 2025.

Even though they didn’t get the win, Venus and Serena gave tennis fans a blast of nostalgia on Monday night ahead of a potential US Open return for them later this month. The comeback, after months of waiting, is officially complete.