Serena and Venus Williams are teaming up again, and this time it's happening in Mason. The sisters received a wild card into the doubles draw at the Cincinnati Open, where they'll open play against Mason native Peyton Stearns and Ukraine's Marta Kostyuk during the night session on the Grandstand court.
The pairing marks the Williams sisters' first WTA appearance together below the Grand Slam level in a decade, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Over the past ten years, the sisters had only played doubles together at majors in New York, Paris, Great Britain and at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, per the same report. Before that stretch, their most recent forays into lower-tier doubles events came at the 2016 Italian Open, the 2014 Dubai Tennis Championships, the 2013 China Open, the 2010 Madrid Open, and the 2009 Bank of the West Classic — meaning this week's match in Mason will be just the sixth WTA 1000-or-lower event the sisters have played together as a doubles team.
Serena and Venus last shared a court together at the 2022 US Open. Since then, Serena stepped away from the tour before launching her comeback earlier this summer, first accepting a doubles wild card alongside Victoria Mboko at the HSBC Championships at Queen's Club in London at age 44 — her first pro match since September 2022. She also played doubles with Karolina Muchova at the Vanda Pharmaceuticals Berlin Open, according to the Enquirer's report.
A Rivalry With a Hometown Twist
Their opening-round opponents bring their own storylines. Stearns was born and raised in Mason, Ohio, and went on to win the 2022 NCAA women's singles championship for the Texas Longhorns before turning pro and picking up two WTA singles titles, according to University of Texas Athletics. Venus already has recent history against Stearns, having beaten her in the DC Open round of 32 in July 2025, per the Enquirer.
Kostyuk, meanwhile, arrives in career-best form. The Ukrainian climbed to a career-high WTA singles ranking of No. 11 in July after winning the Madrid Open WTA 1000 title and reaching the semifinals at both the French Open and Wimbledon this year, according to the WTA Tour. She also holds two career WTA doubles titles of her own. The Cincinnati Open itself sits one level below a Grand Slam as a WTA 1000 event, the Enquirer notes.
Careers Marked by Contrast
Venus, now 46, has struggled in singles this year, entering the tournament on a 14-match losing streak and having fallen to Emiliana Arango in straight sets, 6-2, 6-2, according to the Enquirer's reporting. Still, she made headlines last year when she became the oldest woman in 21 years to win a WTA Tour singles match. She has appeared at the Cincinnati event in three of the last four years, while Serena's return to the tournament marks her first Cincinnati appearance since 2022 — a stretch during which she won back-to-back titles there in 2014 and 2015.
Together, the sisters remain undefeated in Grand Slam doubles finals at 14-0 and have won three Olympic gold medals as partners, in 2000, 2008 and 2012, according to historical tennis records. They also remain the only sisters in tennis history to have simultaneously held the WTA's top two singles rankings, first achieving that feat in July 2002, with Serena spending 319 weeks at No. 1 to Venus's 11.
A Newly Transformed Stage in Mason
The sisters' reunion also arrives on a dramatically remade campus. The Lindner Family Tennis Center underwent a $260 million expansion led by tournament owner Beemok Capital, doubling the site to 40 acres and expanding it to 31 total courts, according to BizBash. The renovation included a new 56,000-square-foot player clubhouse and a 2,000-seat sunken stadium. Beemok also signed a 25-year agreement in October 2023, backed by $50.5 million in state and local public funding, to keep the 125-year-old tournament in Mason through at least 2048 after weighing a possible move to Charlotte.
Tournament director Bob Moran said ticket sales are going really well, the Enquirer reported, as the Williams sisters' presence has helped fill a void left by two major absences in the men's draw. Three-time champion Novak Djokovic — last seen in Cincinnati in 2023 — was upset in the round of 64 by 50th-ranked Thiago Agustin Tirante, a defeat covered in Hoodline's report on Djokovic's early exit. Defending finalist Carlos Alcaraz withdrew entirely in early August due to a lingering right wrist injury, as detailed in Hoodline's coverage of his tournament withdrawal.
Djokovic's early loss followed his marathon three-hour, 49-minute win over Alcaraz in last year's tournament — the longest match in Cincinnati Open history — while this year's men's final rematch between Jannik Sinner and Alcaraz never materialized after both players withdrew. With Djokovic and the Williams sisters representing a combined 86 Grand Slam titles between them as the tournament's headline draws, attention in Mason has shifted squarely to what happens when Serena and Venus step onto the Grandstand court together.
