Serena and Venus Williams were five points from a storybook return when the match suddenly slipped away. The sisters led 5-0 in the deciding tiebreak, only for Maya Joint and Chan Hao-ching to storm back and take the next seven points. Even after the loss, Arthur Ashe Stadium was reluctant to let the Williams sisters go. 

The three-hour thriller marked their first Grand Slam doubles appearance together since 2022, and the crowd had just watched the 14-time major champions come within moments of completing one more comeback. What happened after they left the court, however, put the sisters in a very different kind of spotlight.

Serena and Venus skipped their mandatory post-match media obligations, leaving each potentially liable for a fine of up to $50,000. The US Open ultimately chose not to fine either player.
What made the decision unusual was that the sisters did not meet the criteria for missing the duties. 

There was no publicly stated injury or illness attached to the sisters’ absence. The Grand Slam rulebook does allow players to miss media opportunities on “reasonable grounds,” including illness or injury, but the USTA has not said that either circumstance applied to Serena or Venus in New York.

Instead, the tournament simply chose not to impose the penalty. Reporting from Ben Rothenberg offers a closer look at what happened in the minutes after the match: Serena waved to the crowd, walked straight out of Arthur Ashe Stadium and left in a car, while Venus remained behind and went to the locker room. The media requests, however, had been made for the sisters as a pair, leaving Venus unlikely to appear alone on behalf of the doubles team.

That distinction matters because the rule is broader than a simple requirement to sit in a press conference. The 2026 Grand Slam Rule Book requires both winners and losers, including doubles teams, to attend post-match media opportunities at an appropriate and reasonable time. Sixty minutes is given as a guideline, while players who cannot appear are expected to have reasonable grounds and maintain an appropriate level of communication. A violation can carry a fine of up to $50,000.

In other words, the $100,000 figure was never an automatic bill waiting for the Williams sisters. It was the maximum combined penalty they could have faced if both were sanctioned. The USTA instead confirmed on Saturday that neither Serena nor Venus would be fined. The decision also lands differently when viewed against Serena’s most recent experience with the same rule. 

At Wimbledon in July, she skipped her post-match media obligations after losing to Maya Joint in her singles comeback. This time, however, there was a documented reason: Serena’s agent said she had tweaked her right knee late in the first set and had been excused from her media duties by Wimbledon and WTA medical teams.

That injury was not minor enough to simply disappear after the press conference. Serena later withdrew from her planned Wimbledon doubles appearance with Venus, with Reuters reporting significant fluid buildup in her right knee. Serena also shared images of fluid that had been drained from the knee before acknowledging that she had done everything she could to be ready.

But that Wimbledon explanation should not be carried over to New York as if it explains the latest absence. There has been no comparable public statement linking Serena’s knee to the Williams sisters’ decision not to speak to the media after their US Open defeat. The only confirmed connection is that the injury had already interrupted the sisters’ Wimbledon plans earlier in the summer.

The Williams sisters, meanwhile, have been down this road before. In 2022, when Serena and Venus last played a Grand Slam doubles match together before this comeback, they also left the US Open without doing interviews. That night, the sisters lost 7-6(5), 6-4 to Lucie Hradecka and Linda Noskova in Arthur Ashe Stadium. Contemporary reports specifically noted that they did not do interviews after the match.

The parallel is striking. In both years, the sisters returned to Arthur Ashe as one of the night’s biggest attractions, lost their opening-round doubles match and did not speak to reporters afterward. The difference in 2026 is the scale of the potential penalty: what was once a relatively modest media fine can now reach $50,000 per player under the current Grand Slam rules.

Furthermore, it is also not the first time the sisters have faced consequences for missing Grand Slam media duties. 

In 2010, Serena and Venus were each fined $4,000 after failing to attend their Wimbledon doubles quarterfinal press conference following a loss to Vera Zvonareva and Elena Vesnina. Serena said at the time that she had not realized doubles press conferences were required, explaining that she and Venus generally did not do them outside the later stages of tournaments.

Venus has since had her own history with the rule. She was fined $3,000 after skipping media following her first-round loss to Sloane Stephens at the 2015 French Open. A year later, she received another $5,000 fine after losing to Johanna Konta in the first round of the Australian Open and not attending her post-match press conference.

That history makes the US Open’s latest decision stand out even more. The sisters have previously paid for similar absences, and Serena’s own Wimbledon no-show this summer was handled differently because a medical reason was established. In New York, no public explanation of that kind has been offered, yet neither sister will pay anything.

For now, the clearest explanation is therefore also the simplest one: the obligation was still there, the potential penalty was real, but the USTA chose not to enforce it against either of the Williams sisters.