Two days after surprising her world by winning a match, at 45, for her first tournament for sixteen months, she was dryly bowed 6-2 6-2 against the Polish Magdalena Frech.
“I no longer had any juice today, I tried to find energy but I could not. Four matches in the first week (with those in doubles, note), that’s a lot!” Smile the American champion.
Forty-eight hours earlier, the eldest of sisters Williams had amazed 6-3 6-4 the 35th world player, his compatriot Peyton Stearns, half his age. A performance that made her the second older player in history to win a match on the WTA circuit, more than twenty years after another legend, Martina Navratilova, at 47 in 2004.
Even more impressive as a year ago, she suffered the removal of uterine fibroids, benign tumors but which had been suffering for decades, and remained on sixteen months without match (March 2024 in Miami) and almost two years without victory (August 2023 at Cincinnati).
But for her fourth game in four days, counting her two in doubles, the weight of the years appeared to catch her Thursday evening. No, its striking force did not disappear, but it died after only fifteen minutes of play only, until she takes seven games in a row to find itself led 2-0 in the second set, after being in the lead, 2-1, in the first.
– Cincinnati avant New-York –
Despite an audience – sparse – all acquired in its cause until the last point, “Queen V” folded in 73 minutes. “I had so fun, I was able to play a lot of matches here, it’s a plus, I couldn’t be happier from my first week, she retains. The good news is that I always have control of the points. The important thing is to put the ball in it, that’s what I did not do today.”
But “I know I can play better and that I will play better,” she says. Because more than thirty years after her beginnings on the WTA circuit (in 1994), the American with the seven Grand Slam corners and four Olympic titles does not intend to stop there: she is now expected at the WTA 1000 in Cincinnati in early August, then in the revisited formula of the mixed double at the US Open, alongside the American giant Reilly Opelka.
How has she prepared for such efforts, at 45? “I have never lost shape, you should ask someone who lets go, it’s not my thing,” said Venus Williams, who has not won two matches in a row since the summer of 2019.