Rakhimova vs Williams — the wild card who has not won all year

Preview · National Bank Open, Toronto (WTA 1000) · First round · 2 August 2026

There is only one name in this match that sells tickets, and it is not the favourite’s. Venus Williams, forty-six years old and holder of a wild card into the main draw, opens against Kamilla Rakhimova, a player half her age who is inside the world’s top hundred and has spent the season beating people ranked well above her. Affection for what Williams has meant to the sport is entirely justified. Pretending it changes the tennis on offer here is not.

The matchup

Rakhimova, who turns twenty-five later this month, sits in the low eighties, close to her career high of sixtieth. She is a compact, aggressive baseliner who has been an awkward first-round draw all year. Williams, born in June 1980, is the wild card, ranked several hundred places outside the top two hundred, and is playing this event on the tournament’s invitation rather than on her ranking. They have never met on tour, which is not surprising given that Rakhimova was a small child when Williams was winning majors. Rakhimova is the favourite here, and it is not close.

Form & conditions

The honest record is stark. Williams has played nine singles matches in 2026 and has not won one of them, losing in the first round every time. That sequence includes Auckland against Magda Linette, Hobart against Tatjana Maria, and a three-set defeat to Olga Danilović at the Australian Open, all on hard courts, and it runs right up to last week in Washington, where Potapova beat her in straight sets. In 2025 she managed a single win from four matches, though she did enjoy a genuinely strong doubles fortnight, reaching the US Open quarter-finals alongside Leylah Fernandez. She is not short of recent match play; she is short of wins. Rakhimova’s year is a much more ordinary professional’s year — under water overall, but with real quality in it: a win over Bianca Andreescu at Indian Wells before Coco Gauff beat her, a first-round win at Roland Garros, a quarter-final at Queen’s Club on grass, and a second round at Wimbledon after beating Anhelina Kalinina. She played Washington qualifying in late July, so she too arrives with recent hard-court tennis behind her.

The deciding factor

Movement over three or four hours of physical baseline exchanges. Williams can still strike a clean ball and serve big for stretches, and on a fast court that will win her games. What has consistently gone wrong in 2026 is the second and third gear — the sliding, the recovery, the ability to sustain a level once an opponent extends rallies. Rakhimova’s whole method is to keep the ball deep and make her opponent play, which targets precisely that.

The call

Rakhimova to win, with medium confidence. Williams may well take a set if the serve lands and the crowd lifts her, and nobody should sneer at a forty-six-year-old standing on a 1000-level court, but a player who has not won a match all season is not a live threat over the distance.