Venus Williams, 45, Becomes Second-Oldest WTA Singles Match Winner After 16-Month Comeback

A 45-year-old rewrites tennis history

Venus Williams is not done. At 45, after a 16-month layoff and major surgery less than a year ago, she stepped back onto the WTA stage and won a tour-level singles match, becoming the second-oldest woman ever to do it. That July victory was more than a box score. It was a marker of what stubborn belief looks like when the body and the calendar try to say otherwise.

Her route back was steep. Williams had been away from official competition for well over a year, working through recovery after surgery for uterine fibroids. For any woman, that procedure is a hard reset. For a pro athlete whose game depends on explosive movement and core strength, it’s a mountain. She rebuilt quietly—range of motion first, then footwork, then the heavy lifts: serve rhythm, reaction speed, match instincts. That last one only returns when the lights are on and there’s someone across the net trying to take your time away.

In July 2025, the lights came back on. Williams got the win that put her back in the record books, the kind of result that makes the locker room buzz. It nodded to a rarified club of players who stayed elite when most peers had long retired. The smile said it all—relief, yes, but also an unmistakable message: this is still where she belongs.

Her comeback rolled straight into New York. The 2025 US Open marked her first Grand Slam singles appearance in two years and her 25th in Queens—an astonishing run of presence on the sport’s loudest court. The draw gave her Karolina Muchova, the 2023 Roland Garros runner-up and a two-time US Open semifinalist, a player who mixes feel, angles, and court craft in a way that exposes any hesitation.

On Monday night at Arthur Ashe, the match delivered drama if not upset. Williams split the first two sets with Muchova before falling 6-3, 2-6, 6-1. In the middle set, the crowd got a flash of the old script: early strikes, first-ball aggression, and the kind of fearless return position that dares the opponent to find the lines. The legs held. The hands were live. The belief never left. She didn’t advance, but the night still landed like a milestone.

There was history in the air. By stepping onto Ashe, Williams became the oldest singles competitor at the US Open since 1981, breaking a 44-year age barrier at the tournament. That piece of context matters. Hard courts, night humidity, and elite pace compress time for the body. To handle that at 45 is its own kind of victory, one only a handful of athletes have claimed.

Williams framed the moment with simple clarity before the tournament: she was chasing her best, not a number on the scoreboard. “I want to be my best,” she said. “That’s the expectation I have for myself: to get the best out of me.” It’s a clean philosophy for a player whose game has always been direct—big serve, first-strike forehand, take the initiative.

The bigger story here is what it takes to come back from uterine fibroids surgery into elite competition. Recovery is not linear. Scar tissue changes how the core feels. Endurance fades, then crawls back. Timing, which is instinct in a groove year, needs reps—live points, not just practice baskets. The work is daily and often invisible. For a veteran, the margin for error is razor thin, which is why that July win resonated so strongly inside the sport.

Age, of course, is the headline. Women’s tennis is younger, faster, and deeper than ever. The tour’s baseline exchanges look different from even a decade ago—heavier spin, higher pace, relentless pressure on second serves. That makes what Williams just did rarer still. Becoming the second-oldest woman to win a WTA singles match isn’t a nostalgia note; it’s a modern achievement, earned in the teeth of a harder game.

Context helps. Williams is a seven-time Grand Slam singles champion—five Wimbledons and two US Opens—and a 25-time fixture in New York. She helped change the economics of the sport, pushing for equal prize money at majors. She also managed a chronic autoimmune condition for years while still finding ways to compete at the top. Longevity for her has never been passive. It’s been a series of choices to adapt, to listen to her body, and to recalibrate goals without softening standards.

Muchova was a tough landing spot for a first-round Slam match. She’s a problem-solver with variety, the type who drags opponents into uncomfortable zones. Williams met that with aggression and periods of clean hitting, especially early in rallies. The gap showed late, when match toughness—those micro-decisions at 30-30, that half-step to a drop shot—tilted Muchova’s way. After 16 months away, that’s the last piece to come back.

The crowd knew what it was watching. Arthur Ashe has long memories. Fans in the upper deck stood to cheer changeovers, and the murmurs hit a different pitch every time Williams found a corner. You don’t fake that kind of connection; it’s built across a quarter-century of night sessions and swing-for-it winners.

What this comeback means now

So what does a single win in July and a tight three-set loss in August tell us? That the competitive fire is real. That the body can still answer when asked. And that, for Williams, being present on tour again matters as much as any seed next to her name. She has always been more than a ranking.

There’s also the ripple effect. Younger players see a different blueprint for a long career—one that allows for pauses, restarts, and second acts. Coaches and trainers can point to a 45-year-old who dialed back in with careful periodization and patient progressions. Tournament directors, meanwhile, get a reminder that a sport’s history doesn’t live only in museums; sometimes it steps onto center court and hits the first ball on the rise.

Her comments this summer kept returning to a theme: personal excellence over external pressure. That lands differently when you have seven majors and decades of hard miles behind you. It gives her freedom to pick her schedule, to manage practice loads, to aim at days where the body feels light. It’s a pragmatic plan, not a farewell tour.

The medical piece is worth sitting with. Uterine fibroids are common and often under-discussed in sports. Symptoms can sap energy, disrupt training, and force stop-start seasons. Surgery can solve problems but creates new hurdles—pain management, flexibility work, and confidence in explosive movement. Williams navigating that and returning at this level is not just inspiring; it’s instructive for athletes facing their own medical detours.

From a pure tennis lens, her blueprint hasn’t changed much: shorten points, serve with intention, take the backhand early, and pounce on second serves. The adjustment is in managing recovery between matches, stacking quality practices without overloading, and trusting patterns that have won her some of the sport’s biggest trophies. On the right day, against the right opponent, that mix still bites.

There’s a reason her peers and fans showed so much love during this return. Williams’s résumé is heavy—Grand Slams, Olympic golds, weeks at No. 1 in doubles, countless weeks in the Top 10 in singles—but her legacy stretches beyond stats. She made power tennis normal on the women’s tour. She made winning at Wimbledon feel inevitable for a generation. And she showed, again this summer, that resolve scales with experience.

As for New York, 25 appearances carry a lot of echoes: a teenage breakout in the late 1990s, bruising night-session duels in the 2000s, late-career runs fueled by savvy and grit. This year added a new sound—applause for a record nobody expects to see broken soon. Oldest singles player at the US Open since 1981. Second-oldest to win a WTA singles match. Different benchmarks, same message: longevity is a competitive skill.

What comes next? She didn’t circle a retirement date. She didn’t need to. The goal she laid out is simple—keep getting better at being her best. If the body cooperates, there will be more starts, more chances to stack form, and more nights where the forehand down the line feels like it did when she first shook up the sport. If not, she already gave the season a moment no one else could.

Call it perspective, or just a stubborn athlete still finding joy in the hard parts. The scoreboard from Ashe says Muchova in three sets. The season says something else: a comeback reset the bar for what age means in women’s tennis, and the sport was better for having her back.

The milestones in one place:

• Second-oldest woman to win a WTA tour-level singles match (July 2025)
• Oldest singles competitor at the US Open since 1981
• 25th US Open main-draw appearance
• Seven Grand Slam singles titles across two surfaces

If you’re counting, that’s a lot of history in a short span. And still, the scene that lingers is simple: a veteran walking into the world’s largest tennis stadium, soaking in the noise, bouncing on her toes at the baseline, racquet ready for the next ball. Not a farewell. Just another start.