NEW YORK — That Venus Williams lost her first Grand Slam match in two years — and what she says will be her last match of 2025 — didn’t really matter Monday night.

Certainly not to the thousands of supportive spectators in the Arthur Ashe Stadium seats who roared for her best shots and, in a way, for everything her career means to them, before sending her off the court with a standing ovation after a 6-3, 2-6, 6-1 defeat against 11th-seeded Karolina Muchova at the U.S. Open .

The result also sure seemed beside the point to Williams herself, at 45 the oldest singles player at Flushing Meadows since 1981. She smiled and laughed and joked through her postmatch news conference — until, that is, a reporter asked something that made her think back to all of the injury and illness iss

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