Venus makes rare doubles appearance in Birmingham

In an unexpected move, Venus Williams entered Birmingham. In an even more unexpected move, she also entered the doubles draw—with 22-year-old Brit Harriet Dart. It's Venus' first time in eight years playing a warm-up event before Wimbledon.

Venus has played with someone other than her sister Serena just once in the past decade (that honor goes to Madison Keys in Rome last year). She and Serena have won 14 Grand Slams together.

While she's played Fed Cup with various partners, when it comes to WTA tournaments, it's normally safe to bet that she'll team up with Serena or no one. Last year, she played just two doubles events, Rome and Roland Garros.

Venus has skipped doubles entirely for whole seasons, including in 2017, '15 and '11, and until this week, she's played just one Premier-level doubles tournament in the past five years (Doha in 2014).

Hart was obviously honored to get the call-up.

Hart is ranked No. 110 in doubles and No. 157 in singles. Her best results this season have been the finals of an ITF $25K in singles and winning a $60K in doubles. But she held her own in Birmingham in a 4-6, 7-6 (3), 10-7 loss to Abigail Spears and Nadiia Kichenok on Monday—which also happened to be Venus' 39th birthday.

"We had a blast. She is clearly very passionate about the game and is putting the work in and, as a young person, it takes time to figure out your game, figure out your strengths, figure out how to play against these players with more experience," Venus said. "I wish we could have had a little more time to get used to playing with each other. So that was a great performance from us and with Serena's permission may be we will play together again."

Venus will play Aliaksandra Sasnovich on Tuesday.