Venus Williams celebrated her 20th anniversary at the US Open on Monday as the tournament celebrated 20 years of Arthur Ashe Stadium, where she claimed two of her seven Grand Slam titles. Williams was a 17-year-old upstart with beads in her hair when she rallied to defeat Latvia's Larisa Neiland 5-7, 6-0, 6-1 in the first round of the 1997 US Open in her Flushing Meadows debut on her way to her first Grand Slam final, which she lost to Martina Hingis.
"It has been 20 wonderful years," Williams told the crowd after a 6-3, 3-6, 6-2 first-round victory over Slovakian qualifier Viktoria Kuzmova. "I'm not sure there are going to be 20 more." Since Williams became the first unseeded US Open women's finalist since 1958, she has won the 2000 and 2001 US Opens and five Wimbledon crowns, including her most recent Slam title in 2008.
But this season, at age 37, Williams has turned back the clock, reaching the finals at Wimbledon and the Australia Open. She lost to Spain's Garbine Muguruza on the All England grass and to her pregnant sister Serena at Melbourne last January. She reached Arthur Ashe Stadium having played in two Grand Slam finals in a year for the first time since 2003, marveling at the largest venue in tennis from her airplane window.
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