Martina Navratilova has doffed her hat to Venus Williams after the seven-time Grand Slam winner silenced those who questioned her return to action at the Washington DC Open.<\/p>\n
Organisers of the WTA 500 tournament came in for some criticism for awarding the tennis great a wildcard for the event following her extended spell on the sidelines, but the 45-year-old repaid their faith.<\/p>\n
Williams<\/a> \u2013 whose last match before the Citi DC Open was in March 2024 \u2013 made an \u201cunbelievable\u201d return to top-level action as she first teamed up with Hailey Baptside in the women\u2019s doubles on Monday to defeat Eugenie Bouchard and Clervie Ngounoue.<\/p>\n A day later, she made her singles comeback and this time she upset world no 35 Peyton Stearns 6-3, 6-4<\/a> in one hour and 37 minutes as she recorded her first WTA win since the Cincinnati Open in August 2023.<\/p>\n The American\u2019s fellow former world No 1 Navratilova admitted she also had concerns about Williams\u2019 return, but has been forced to eat her words.<\/p>\n \u201cI was thinking, \u2018Oh, this isn\u2019t going to end well\u2019. And how wrong was I? How wrong was I?\u201d the 18-time major winner told the official WTA Tour website.<\/p>\n Who is Venus Williams\u2019 fiance? Italian film star and former model Andrea Preti<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The 6 tallest world No 1\u2019s on the WTA Rankings: ft. Venus Williams, Maria Sharapova<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n She added: \u201cWhat can you say \u2013 because it\u2019s unbelievable. She beat a top-ranked [No. 35] player. I mean, hats off.\u201d<\/p>\n Williams spoke about her love for the game<\/a> after her incredible win as she also admitted she had doubts over her comeback.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, the meaning of this win, there is a lot of work that goes into this kind of preparation. I think each week that I was training, I was, like, Oh, my God, I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m good enough yet,\u201d she revealed.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then there would be weeks where I would leap forward, and there would be two weeks where I was, like, Oh, God, it\u2019s not happening. Even the week leading up, Oh, my gosh, I need to improve so much more. So it\u2019s all a head game.<\/p>\n \u201cI think more than anything, it\u2019s just about love, right? If you have enough love for it, then you\u2019ll put in the effort, and then you\u2019ll find that little extra little bit at the end because I love it so much.\u201d<\/p>\n And Navratilova echoed her fellow American\u2019s comments and she hopes there is more to come from the great.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just shows how much Venus loves the game,\u201d Navratilova said. \u201cHope, perseverance, not quitting. Follow your path, just follow your path. If you\u2019re on the path that you want to be on, that you love, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose, no matter what the result is, because you\u2019re loving the path.<\/p>\n \u201cVenus loves all of it, getting on the court. I hope she keeps going.\u201d<\/p>\n The post Martina Navratilova makes \u2018how wrong was I\u2019 admission about Venus Williams<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Martina Navratilova has doffed her hat to Venus Williams after the seven-time Grand Slam winner silenced those who questioned her return to action at the Washington DC Open. Organisers of the WTA 500 tournament came in for some criticism for awarding the tennis great a wildcard for the event following her extended spell on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Venus Williams News<\/h2>\n