On any other day, Townsend, playing at her home major, would have been the crowd favourite.
On Sunday, the Louis Armstrong Stadium rode every high and low as she spurned eight match points before losing to Barbora Krejcikova in three sets to exit the women’s singles in the last 16.
But on the same stage in the doubles, she was playing against a partisan crowd.
Williams is, after all, a four-time champion at Flushing Meadows across the formats, winning back-to-back singles titles in 2000 and 2001 and earning two doubles titles alongside sister Serena in 1999 and 2009.
Across her career, she has fought back from wrist and back injuries as well as being diagnosed with Sjogren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disease that causes fatigue.
This was her first appearance in the last eight of a Grand Slam since reaching the semi-finals in the singles in New York in 2017 and her first doubles quarter-final since winning Wimbledon in 2016.
But despite the raucous reception as she walked on to court, the match was one-way traffic.
The top seeds were relentless, winning 12 of the first13 points to race into a 3-0 lead.
Their success was met with polite, if muted, applause and it was not until the fourth game, when Williams rolled back the years with a bruising forehand winner off Siniakova’s serve, that the crowd erupted into life.
Williams later held her second service game to 15 but Townsend and Siniakova, who only dropped six points on serve throughout the match, had one foot in the last four after 22 minutes.
The second set proved more competitive, with Williams and Fernandez both holding their serves, but with their opponents sending down 12 winners and just two unforced errors, they could not get a foothold in the match.
Townsend and Czech Siniakova, who have yet to drop a set, will face fourth seeds Veronika Kudermetova and Elise Mertens for a place in the final.
Elsewhere on Tuesday, Britain’s Joe Salisbury and Neal Skupski – the sixth seeds – fought back from a set down to reach the third round of the men’s doubles with a 4-6 7-6 (7-3) 6-4 win over Monaco’s Hugo Nys and Frenchman Edouard Roger-Vasselin.
However, Briton Marcus Willis was knocked out as he and Karol Drzewiecki of Poland fell to 4-6 6-3 6-1 defeat by Czech pair Tomas Machac and Matej Vocel.
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