NEW YORK, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Four years after what seemed like their final bow, Serena and Venus Williams transformed a first-round U.S. Open doubles defeat into a celebration of tennis in front of 23,000 adoring fans at Arthur Ashe Stadium on Friday.
Australia's Maya Joint and Taiwan's Chan Hao-ching emerged with a 6-3 6-7(6) 7-6(10-7) win, but for much of the contest the score felt irrelevant as fans roared at every Williams winner and fell into virtual silence at every point in between.
Serena, 44, walked onto court wearing a shiny customized bomber jacket decorated with patches marking her U.S. Open singles and doubles triumphs. Her 46-year-old sister stodd alongside, the pair carrying matching pink bags.
The comeback, which Serena said was at the suggestion of her daughter, carried the weight of more than two decades: 14 Grand Slam doubles titles together, two U.S. Open crowns, three Olympic gold medals, and another 30 Grand Slam singles titles between them.
Joint and Chan, the 14th seeds, weathered the hostile atmosphere to take the opening set, but the Williams sisters hit back in the second, riding the crowd's energy to force a third set.
The Americans showed they had lost none of their grit, going toe-to-toe with the younger pair, spurred on by a raucous crowd desperate to carry their long-time idols over the finish line.
But Joint and Chan edged the super tiebreak in dramatic fashion, sealing victory in just over three hours.
"Being able to play against such legends of the game is super special," said Joint on court.
The reunion had been a long time coming.
The sisters were forced to withdraw from the Wimbledon doubles draw after Serena suffered a knee injury in singles, leaving New York as the stage for the comeback fans had been waiting for.
Joint, 20, beat Serena at Wimbledon in the only singles match of her comeback and the Australian struggled to sum up the Flushing Meadows experience.
"I'm lost for words to think of it," she said. "She's my idol, both of them. I grew up in Michigan so I always looked up to them. Being able to play them twice is amazing."
The Williams sisters had arrived in Flushing Meadows with little recent doubles form together, having lost in three sets to Marta Kostyuk and Peyton Stearns in Cincinnati.
Serena had already given New York a taste of the magic, though, teaming up with Carlos Alcaraz for a mixed doubles run that ended in the quarter-finals.
Whether the sisters team up again is uncertain, so for the crowd at Flushing Meadows on Friday, seeing Serena's clenched fist and Venus at her side made it a night to remember.
(Reporting by Janina Nuno Rios in New York; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
