Venus sets mark before swinging her racket
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA—At 45, it’s no surprise Venus Williams will be setting an age record at the Australian Open when she lines up on Sunday in the first round.
The fact that she’ll be the oldest player ever to compete in the Australian Open women’s singles draw wasn’t something she realized until after she’d received a wild card entry to play at the year’s first major for the first time in five years.
“I hadn’t thought about it until it came out in the press,” she said on Saturday in closing her pretournament news conference. “So yay. Yay for me! Let’s do this.”
She then left the auditorium and walked hand-in-hand with her husband, Andrea Preti, down a corridor back toward the player area—which isn’t much like she remembered it from her previous trip in 2021, the 21st time she’d competed at Melbourne Park.
Williams was married in December, a celebration she said was her priority between the first two major tournaments in a comeback to the tour that started last July.
She was 17 when she first played the Australian Open in 1998, reaching the quarterfinals in just her fourth Grand Slam event and coming off the back of a run to the final of the US Open.
“It was a beautiful time, because there’s so much I didn’t know,” she said when asked to reflect on her first trip. “But there’s a great thing of not knowing because it lets you have a clean slate. There was so much I needed to learn and then I learned it.
“That’s the thing about sport—you keep stepping up to the line and while there is nothing to prove, it’s all about the attitude and the effort. No one can control that. Controlling that part is really the win.”
Williams lost her Grand Slam comeback match at the US Open last August. Williams will face Olga Danilovic, a 24-year-old left-hander from Serbia, in the last match on Sunday at John Cain Arena.
The No. 68-ranked Danilovic is playing her 11th Grand Slam tournament and her third in Australia, where her run to the fourth round last year equaled her best at a major.
