The Match in 15 Minutes: Venus Williams' historic win over Peyton Stearns

Fifteen minutes wouldn't seem like enough time to learn about a player—particularly a player whose career began in the mid-1990s. It's been more than 30 years since Venus Williams turned pro, and nearly that long since she won her first of seven Grand Slam singles titles. Imagine how many minutes she's spent on a tennis court.

Yet the 15 minutes we've cut from her most recent singles match, Tuesday night in Washington, D.C., tells a story all its own. Over the course of the 45-year-old's inspirational and impressive victory over 35th-ranked Peyton Stearns (just 23), we can still see the hallmarks of Venus' game that made her so great, and why she remains so popular.

Her serving isn't as sharp as it once was, her movement not as crisp. Rust was evident. But Venus' aura remains. That's a term more associated with Gen Z then Venus' peers, but no matter your age, it's impossible not to appreciate what Williams achieved. In her first singles match in 16 months (since the Miami Open in March 2024), she became the oldest player to win a WTA-level match in more than 21 years.

Venus was already the oldest player to even play a WTA-level match in almost eight years, since a 46-year-old Kimiko Date at Tokyo in 2017.

"I'm just trying to figure out how many wins will it take before I'm off COBRA," Williams joked after the match. "I haven't asked the WTA yet, but I gotta just keep winning until finally my insurance kicks back in, so..."

See the highlights yourself in today's The Match in 15 Minutes, which you can watch here, on the Tennis Channel app.