Venus Williams Loses 6-2 6-2 to 18-Year-Old Lilli Tagger in Guangzhou

Venus Williams lost 6-2 6-2 to Lilli Tagger at the Guangzhou Open in China, her 16th consecutive singles defeat. The 46-year-old former world number one has not won a match since July 2025.

Tagger is 18 and ranked 53rd in the world. Williams is ranked 599th. BBC Sport reports that the 28-year age gap between the two is the biggest between opponents in a WTA match this decade. The WTA is the women's tour, and a player's ranking is based on the points she earns over the past year.

A 6-2 6-2 scoreline means Tagger won both sets by six games to two. Each set goes to the first player to win six games, so this was a straight-sets win with no tiebreak needed. Williams won only four games in the match.

Williams has won seven Grand Slam singles titles, the four biggest tournaments in the sport. She now plays most WTA events on wildcards, which are places given out by tournament organisers to players who would not otherwise qualify for the draw, the list of players in the event.

Her recent results have been difficult. At the US Open, she lost in the first round to Sofia Kenin 6-2 7-6(6), a late-night match that began at 12:13am on a Monday. Reuters reported that the result was her 15th straight singles defeat. In April, after losing in the first round in Madrid, Williams told reporters she hoped to play another tournament. WTA

Tagger's story is a different one. She won the 2025 French Open girls' title, the junior event at the clay-court major in Paris. She is coached by Francesca Schiavone, who won the French Open senior title in 2010. Schiavone lost all eight of her career meetings with Williams, which makes the coaching link a neat piece of tennis history.

For Tagger, the win is a useful result at a tournament where ranking points and prize money are on the line. For Williams, it adds another defeat to a run that now stretches across most of the year. Whether she keeps entering events on wildcards will depend on what she and her team decide next.

Tennis is a game of small arguments. Each point asks the player a question, and the answer comes quickly. Against a player 28 years younger and ranked 46 places higher, the questions came thick and fast, and the answers were not always there.