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Serena and Venus Williams lost a dramatic three-set doubles match to Chan Hao-ching and Maya Joint at the US Open, while Stefanos Tsitsipas upset Jiri Lehecka to advance to the fourth round.
Serena and Venus Williams electrified Arthur Ashe Stadium but fell to Chan Hao-ching and Maya Joint in three thrilling sets in their return to the US Open women's doubles competition.
The superstar sisters, whose 14 Grand Slam doubles titles include two US Open crowns, rallied from a break down in the third set and led the deciding 10-point tiebreaker 5-0 before ultimately falling 6-3, 6-7, 7-6. Venus, 46, and Serena, 44, had not played Grand Slam doubles since the 2022 US Open and last won a title together at Roland Garros in 2018.
Throughout the contest, they showed flashes of their brilliant best, with Serena proving particularly dangerous while patrolling the net, although she struggled at times with her serve. After recovering from losing the first set, the sisters leveled the match in a hard-fought second-set tiebreaker, belting no fewer than 20 winners in that set while holding serve throughout and tying the match when Joint smacked an overhead shot long to roars from the New York crowd.
Chan and Joint regrouped to seize a 4-2 lead in the third set, but the Williams sisters rallied once more. Despite their late surge, they fell short at the finish line as Taiwan's Chan and Joint fought back superbly to clinch the victory. For Serena Williams, the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion considered by many to be tennis's greatest women's player, the appearance marked her first return to the courts of Flushing Meadows since she stepped away from competition.
The 44-year-old had briefly returned to major singles play as a Wimbledon wild card four years after evolving away from the game. At the All-England Club, she had lost to Joint in a Centre Court clash that captured the imagination of both diehard and casual tennis fans around the world. Even that memorable experience did not fully prepare Joint for the occasion inside the cavernous Arthur Ashe Stadium.
The sisters received a thunderous ovation when they took the court, looking all business in their understated white outfits. Every blistering volley and overhead smash from the Americans received raucous cheers from the spectators, and when they sprinted to a 5-0 lead in the decisive 10-point tiebreaker, the noise inside the arena was absolutely deafening.
Meanwhile, former top-five player Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, who has struggled in recent years, upset 18th-seeded Jiri Lehecka to reach the US Open fourth round for the first time in his career. Tsitsipas fired four times as many aces as his Czech opponent, closing the match with a service winner to defeat Lehecka 2-6, 6-1, 7-6, 6-1.
After saluting the crowd and acknowledging vocal support from New York's sizeable Greek-American population, Tsitsipas noted that the fans had carried him through the contest. The win followed his first-round upset of rising French star Arthur Fils and placed the Greek in the round of 16, his furthest appearance at a Grand Slam in more than two years.
After the two men split the first two sets, the third-set tiebreaker proved decisive, with Tsitsipas serving two aces in a row while Lehecka, a quarter-finalist in New York the previous year, double faulted and misfired on several ground strokes. Tsitsipas accumulated 34 winners compared to Lehecka's 22, while committing 30 unforced errors against 41 for the Czech player.
Tsitsipas also said he was pain-free after back problems had derailed his 2025 campaign, expressing relief at being able to practice without uncertainty about how his body would respond. A former two-time Grand Slam finalist, Tsitsipas, 28, was a mainstay of the top 10 in the first part of the 2020s after bursting onto the scene as an heir apparent to tennis greats Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic.
But he has since been among the players eclipsed by the rise of Spain's Carlos Alcaraz and Italy's Jannik Sinner. In June, Tsitsipas parted ways permanently with his father Apostolos, who had also served as his coach, and is now working with Thomas Perrin and Patrick Mouratoglou
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