The match was over in 72 minutes. Tagger, who turned 18 earlier this year, hit 29 winners and never faced a break point against a player older than her mother’s generation on tour.

Williams, playing on a wildcard, is now 0-13 in singles in 2026 and has not won a tour-level singles match since July 2025, when she beat Peyton Stearns at the Citi Open in Washington on her return from a 16-month absence from the sport. Her ranking, according to the AP, has fallen to 599.

A 28-year gap across the net

Tagger started 2026 ranked outside the world’s top 700. A Roland Garros girls’ title and a maiden WTA trophy in Prague later, she arrived in Guangzhou seeded fourth and now sits around 53 in the rankings. Six of Williams’s seven Grand Slam singles titles were won before Tagger was born in February 2008; the first, at Wimbledon in 2000, came eight years before her birth.

The Guangzhou tie was Williams’s first event on the Asian swing in seven years and her first match since losing to Sofia Kenin in the first round of the US Open at the end of August, a match that began at 12:13am local time and finished at 2:01am local time, setting the record for the latest start in US Open history.

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“I don’t think I should have to”

Williams has previously spoken publicly about living with Sjögren’s syndrome, the autoimmune condition she was diagnosed with in 2011, and about the uterine fibroids she had surgery for in 2024. Both played a part in the long absence that preceded her return in Washington last year.

Asked about retirement after the US Open defeat, Williams told reporters she was not willing to engage with the question at all.

“I don’t think I should have to. My mind is fully focused on that: how I recover from this completely insane evening and get ready for the next one,” she said in her post-match press conference in New York.

A viral social-media statement that circulated this week, in which she purportedly addressed her 0-16 run and her right to decide the end of her career, was flagged by Yahoo Sports as unverified and could not be traced to any press conference or recorded interview.

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What is on the record is that no retirement date has been announced, and that Williams accepted the Guangzhou wildcard knowing a defeat would extend her streak. She remains entered in the doubles draw in Guangzhou with Indonesia’s Janice Tjen.

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