Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and China’s Jiang Xinyu on Tuesday surged past Poland’s Katarzyna Piter and Sabrina Santamaria of the US in the opening round of women’s doubles at the Washington Open, while Venus Williams made a triumphant return to singles.
The third seeds dominated their opponents 6-1 in the first set before taking the match 7-6 (7/4) in a tight second set, finishing in 1 hour, 19 minutes at the first US Open hard-court tune-up event.
Jiang in January won back-to-back titles with frequent Taiwanese partner Wu Fang-hsien, but in Washington is teaming up with the more experienced Chan.
Photo: AFP
In the quarter-finals, the pair are to face Caroline Dolehide and Sofia Kenin, who defeated Galina Voskoboeva of Kazakhstan and Kamilla Rakhimova of Russia 7-5, 6-3.
Wu and Japanese partner Miyu Kato were defeated 7-5, 6-2, 12-10 by Mexico’s Giuliana Olmos and Indonesia’s Aldila Sutjiadi.
In women’s singles, Williams, retuning after a 16-month hiatus, defeated fellow American Peyton Stearns 6-3, 6-4 to reach the second round.
The 45-year-old winner of seven career Grand Slam singles titles rolled to her 819th career WTA singles victory in 97 minutes.
“It is not easy to come off after all that time and play the perfect match,” she said. “Peyton played so well. I felt like I was trying to slow myself down from going faster and faster and faster.”
Williams had not played a WTA singles match since March of last year at Miami and had not won a match in 709 days — since defeating Russian Veronika Kudermetova in the first round at Cincinnati in August 2023.
Williams became the oldest player to compete in a WTA Tour-level match since Japan’s Kimiko Date at 46 in Tokyo in 2017.
She became the oldest WTA match winner since Martina Navratilova at age 47 at Wimbledon in 2004.
Meanwhile, Japan’s Naomi Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion, ousted Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan 6-2, 7-5 to book a second-round match against Britain’s Emma Raducanu, the 2021 US Open winner who eliminated Ukraine’s seventh-seeded Marta Kostyuk 7-6 (7/4), 6-4.
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