Round 1: Venus Williams vs. Karolina Muchova
Arthur Ashe Stadium – Night Session – First Match
- Under the lights in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Monday night, fans will be treated to two-time champion Venus William's 101st match at the US Open as she starts her 25th campaign here in Queens. No. 11 seed Muchova will look to push past one of the legends of the sport in order to start a deep run to match her semifinal appearances at Flushing Meadows the past two years.
- Williams is currently on a comeback tour after a 16-month hiatus. She reached the second round at Washington, D.C., defeating Peyton Stearns before falling to Magdalena Frech, and played in the first round in Cincinnati.
- "Super thrilling to be back. It does not get old; it just gets more exciting. And I'm looking forward to Monday night," she said in her pre-tournament press conference. "I haven't played as much as the other players, so it's a different challenge when you're dealing with that. So I'm just trying to have fun, stay relaxed and be my personal best.
- Muchova has had a little more time on court this summer, reaching the fourth round at Montreal before falling to Madison Keys, and the third round at Cincinnati. She found lots of hard-court success in the early part of the season, making runs to the semifinals at Linz and Dubai, and the fourth round at Indian Wells.
- The American and the Czech have only met once before—on these very same blue courts in the first round of the 2020 US Open. Muchova won that match, 6-3, 7-5, and while the scoreline makes it look like a straightforward win for the Czech, the battle lasted nearly two hours.
- Thirty-one of the American's 49 tour-level titles have come on hard courts, most recently at Kaohsiung in 2016. Muchova's only title came on the hard courts of Seoul in 2019, but the finalist at Beijing and Palermo last year, Roland Garros and Cincinnati in 2023, and Prague in 2019. Now ranked No. 13—this time last year she sat at No. 52—Muchova has a 3-1 record this year against players outside the Top 100.
- When Williams reached the second round at Washington, D.C., the seven-time Grand Slam champion became the oldest player to win a singles match at a tour-level event since Martina Navritilova in 2004.
