Venus Williams receives wild card entry for US Open mixed doubles at 45 years old

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Venus Williams is 45 years old and about to play in a Grand Slam again.

The longtime tennis star received a wild-card entry into the mixed doubles field of the US Open on Tuesday, the tournament announced, setting her up to play alongside partner Reilly Opelka at Flushing Meadows. She will be joined by several other stars in the field, including Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek.

When she takes the court, it will be Williams' first appearance at a Grand Slam in any field since the same tournament in 2023, where she entered the singles draw via another wild card and was eliminated in the first round by qualifier Greet Minnen.

Since then, Williams has been mostly inactive while going through health issues, including a surgery to remove uterine fibroids. She made her return last week at the D.C. Open, where she won both a singles and doubles match for the first time in 2016.

Williams surprised former NCAA champion Peyton Stearns, then ranked 35th in the world, in the first round of the singles draw before losing to fifth seed Magdalena Fręch in the second round.

Opelka, Williams' doubles partner, is currently 74th on the ATP Tour's men's singles rankings. He is 27 years old and notably tied for the tour's tallest-ever player at 6-foot-11, which gives him one of the nastiest serves in tennis.

Williams is a 23-time Grand Slam champion, with seven singles titles, 14 doubles titles and two mixed doubles titles. She played her first US Open in 1997, when she made the singles finals at 17 years old. She has nothing to prove at this stage, but raised some eyebrows last week when asked why she decided to return to tennis in her mid-40s.

Venus Williams is doing this for the health insurance (sort of)

At the end of her first-round post-match interview, Williams provided a small peak behind the curtain of how professional athletes go about healthcare, revealing that she was actually on COBRA, which allows employees to stay on their employer's health insurance after losing benefits.

Here's what she said:

“I had to come back for the insurance, because they informed me earlier this year I’m on COBRA. So that’s like, I got to get my benefits on ... You guys know what it's like. Let me tell you, I am always at the doctor, so I need this insurance.”

To be clear, Williams was joking there. She said it all that with a smile and called it a "fun and funny moment" after her second match. However, many people and outlets took the statement quite seriously, with some of them using it as a jumping-off point to discuss broader healthcare issues.

It is true that health insurance coverage is an issue for many retiring athletes. Active professional athletes get some of the best health insurance in the world for obvious reasons, and having to figure out coverage after retirement is a challenge for many people who just exited the most lucrative stage of their lives. 

While clarifying the tongue-in-cheek moment following the second match, Williams said in the same breath that it was a "serious issue" and one "that people are dealing with." With $42.7 million in career earnings from her WTA career and likely much more than that from her endorsements, Williams isn't one of those people (barring astonishing financial mismanagement). Given the choice, she will take the WTA's insurance because it gives her one less thing to worry about, but it's a stretch to say she is still playing because she needs the insurance.