Serena Williams’ return to the US Open doubles draw comes with a familiar opponent. She and sister Venus have been drawn to face the 14th-seeded team Hao-Ching Chan and Maya Joint in the first round, putting Serena against the same opponent who ended her singles comeback at Wimbledon this summer.

Joint, the 20-year-old Australian, defeated the American 6-3, 6-7(6), 6-3 at the All England Club, a match in which Serena injured her knee and was later forced to withdraw from a planned doubles reunion with Venus. That setback pushed the sisters’ comeback to the US Open instead, where they will now open against the very player who caused the delay.

The match is scheduled for Thursday at 11 a.m. local time. It marks their first US Open doubles appearance since 2022, when they lost in the first round to Lucie Hradecká and Linda Nosková in what many assumed at the time was their final match together at Flushing Meadows – but it was not. Across nine US Open appearances as a team, Serena and Venus have collected 27 wins against just seven losses, along with two titles in 1999 and 2009.

This rematch comes after they’ve already tested themselves in Cincinnati, losing in a tight first-round battle to Marta Kostyuk and Peyton Stearns.

Thursday’s match is only the latest stop on a comeback that has taken Serena through five tournaments and three different partners since June. She opened at Queen’s Club alongside Victoria Mboko, upsetting third seeds Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Erin Routliffe 7-6(2), 6-2 in her first professional match in nearly four years. 

“I got tired of sitting at home. My kids are out of school for the summer, so why not?” she said afterward. “It feels really special to play somewhere so iconic.” 

A week later in Berlin, paired with Karolína Muchová, she lost her opener to Routliffe and Giuliana Olmos, before the Wimbledon singles defeat to Joint added a knee injury to the mix. She has since gone through Cincinnati with Venus and a run to the mixed doubles quarterfinals with Carlos Alcaraz at this very tournament, winning her opening match before falling to Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli.

The reunion does not stop at New York 

Reuniting with Venus, especially at Flushing Meadows, clearly holds more significance than any other match. When the 23-time Grand Slam champion was forced to pull out of their Wimbledon reunion, the 44-year-old was heartbroken. 

“I’m heartbroken to have to withdraw from doubles,” she wrote at the time. “Coming back to compete again has been a gift, and the opportunity to play alongside Venus Williams once more meant the world to me.” 

Venus, for her part, had been hoping for exactly this moment for weeks before it was confirmed, telling reporters in Washington, “We would love to play the US Open together, so we’ll see what happens.” 

Once the wildcard was finally announced, Serena called it surreal in its own right. “I never expected to be back on this court, so it’s just a really cool moment,” she said. “I never thought this would happen.”

Venus was eliminated from the singles draw in the first round, and Serena chose not to take the singles wildcard that was hers for the taking, leaving doubles as the only tennis either of them has left to play here. But that’s not the end of the story for either one. When she was asked directly recently in New York, Serena left the door open on her singles ambitions. 

“No, I probably will play. I have to,” she said.

A win over Chan and Joint would send the sisters into the second round against the winner of the match between 10th seeds Ellen Perez and Demi Schuurs and the unseeded duo Anastasia Tikhonova and Renata Zarazua. 

Whatever happens against Chan and Joint on Thursday, it is unlikely to be the last time either Williams sister takes a Grand Slam court.