It was a meandering match that spanned 2 hours 24 minutes and encapsulated the three primary stages of Venus Williams’s two-decade career.
The start was electric. In the middle came the malaise. The end was all about perseverance, survival, and coming up short.
Her 10th-seeded opponent, Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic, is 12 years younger than the 36-year-old Williams, but, like Williams, is a slender and stately 6 feet 1 inch, with a strong serve and similarly aggressive game.
In a riveting fourth-round match in the afternoon shadows on the Arthur Ashe Stadium court on Monday, Williams could not convert a match point in the 10th game of the third set, and Pliskova failed on three of her own in the 12th game before deflating Williams and her home-country crowd in a decisive tiebreaker.