Guangzhou, Oct 31 (SocialNews.XYZ) American veteran tennis star Venus Williams lost in her first WTA Tour semifinal in eight years after going down in the Guangzhou Open doubles semifinals along with Janice Tjen here on Saturday.
The 46-year-old veteran and Indonesia's Tjen saved four match points but failed to get past Polina Kudermetova and Maria Timofeeva and ended up losing the one-hour, 45-minute battle 6-4, 6-7 (8), 10-6.
Kudermetova and Timofeeva will now be facing Cho I-hsuan and Yi Tsen Cho of Chinese Taipei in the final. The duo had defeated Zhibek Kulambayeva and Isabelle Haverlag in their semifinal earlier.
This was Williams' maiden WTA Tour doubles semifinal since the 2016 Olympics and Wimbledon and was also her first last-four clash since Indian Wells 2018.
The American-Indonesian pair was broken thrice in the match and managed to break their opponents twice out of 11 break points they had. Williams and Tjen denied Kudermetova and Timofeeva for quite some time as they saved three consecutive match points at 6-3 in the tie-break to force the decider.
Williams and Tjen threatened to pull off a miraculous win as they won the opening three points in the match tie-break. They were leading 6-5 but Kudermetova and Timofeeva bounced back to win the next five points and take the win.
Earlier, Williams had lost in the women's singles to teenager Lilli Tagger in the first round by 6-2, 6-2. This was the veteran' American was playing in a singles match for the first time since the US Open 2026, where she lost to Sofia Kenin in the first round.
Williams, a seven-time Grand Slam singles champion, has now lost 16 consecutive singles matches on the tour, which dates from July 2025. She will be in action next week in Hong Kong, where she has been handed a wildcard.
Source: IANS
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