Serena and Venus Williams, three-time women’s doubles Olympic champions, crashed out in the first round of the women’s doubles tournament at the Rio Games on Sunday in one of the biggest upsets so far in women’s tennis.
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The Frenchwoman will need to perform like she did against Williams in Dubai and at Wimbledon to stand a chance, and she played a good match against Williams in their only meeting at the Olympics eight years ago.
Safarova and Strycova, who arrived in Rio with 10 consecutive victories, seemed to play with faith and delivered a great game. 13th seed, 2011 US Open champion Samantha Stosur dropped the first set 1-6 against 19-year-old Latvian but came back strong and won next two sets 6-3, 6-2.
1980), a seven-time Grand Slam title victor (singles), and Serena Williams (b. The three-time doubles gold medallists were shocked at how things turned out. Neither of them had ever won an Olympics double match before today.
The tennis superstars, who won the gold in 2000, 2008 and 2012, were heavy favorites who were many believed will secure aa fourth win. In the second round, it looks like the sisters were getting the hang of it. Their total score of 185.238 was almost 10 better than second-place China through four subdivisions, a massive gap in a sport in which the margins are often measured in fractions. However, Venus was not really in the zone. We like to play into the tournament but we played a tough team.
According to coach Mary Joe Fernandez, Venus has been struggling with a virus – and she looked out of sorts in both her singles and doubles matches. It was reported that Venus was not feeling well. Serena Williams (USA) of USA and Venus Williams (USA) of USA leave after losing their match against Lucie Safarova (CZE) of Czech Republic and Barbora Strycova (CZE) of Czech Republic. After the two losses for Venus she didn’t meet with the press, and Serena was short in her post-game press conference. Strycova is just a late substitute after Safarova’s original teammate withdrew.
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“I went out there, I was pretty nervous and I tried to fight against that, I don’t know, I just feel happy to be here”, Muguruza said. Serena has won 12 of her last 15 matches on hard court.
