Venus and Serena out of Wimbledon Doubles
The Williams sisters have been knocked out of the doubles quarterfinals with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 defeat to Elena Veshnina and Vera Zvonareva of Russia.
The elimination ends the pair’s aims of winning the Wimbledon tournament this year, after wins at both the Australian Open and French Open. The American sisters had won four Grand Slam tournaments in a row.
The Americans were top ranked at Wimbledon and were bidding for their fifth Wimbledon title, which would round out their total to 13 Grand Slam victories.
The Williams team had four opportunities to break in the second set before Venus ended up dropping service in game six. Zvonareva then went on to save a break point in the third set immediately after Serena had her serve broken the fourth game.
No green grass for Venus
After a disappointing quarter-final singles' loss to Tsvetana Pironkova, Venus Williams is now eliminated from the Wimbledon Championships.
Along with her sister Serena, the two Americans enlivened the doubles game, as Zvonareva and Vesnina came from being down to win in a three-set victory.
Zvonareva undoubtedly got a confidence boost as well as an advantage mentally, following her victory over the top ranked American sisters.
If she goes on to meet Serena in Saturday's ladies’ singles final, reflecting on her win over Serena in the doubles may provide much-needed morale.
And the upsets continue
It was the first loss as in the doubles tournament for the Williams sisters since Wimbledon 2003, and was all the more disappointing since an upset never looked possible early on in the game. The two-time defending doubles champions broke Zvonareva’s serve and went on to take the first set, a win that was due in part to a considerable contribution - both at the baseline and closer at net - from Serena.
The second appeared to turn into a bit of a classic. Vesnina managed to hold serve in the marathon-long fifth game, with partner Zvonareva going on to finish off a long rally at game point, by putting a beautiful volley just into the tramlines. The Russians were able to sense that momentum was rising for their side, and took advantage of their moment, putting more and more pressure on the Venus serve.
The typically enduring, powerful serve ended up failing the Williams sisters, just like it had during Tuesday's dismissive loss to Pironkova.
The sisters committed a double fault on break point, unwittingly handing their opponents a 4-2 lead which the Russians happily finished off.
No more serve-ing to love?
Unlike her sister, Serena did not encounter problems with her own serve during the opening two sets against the Russians, with the younger Williams even going on to collect three straight aces in game one of the second set. Yet the lucky run was not to last long, eventually falling apart at the beginning of the third set.
For the first time in the match, the defending singles Wimbledon champion unfortunately lost her serve at 1-1, handing a big psychological upper hand to the Russians, who ran away with it, without looking back.
Vesnina demonstrated somewhat of a consistent game to go along some powerful hitting, which was an approach that was ideally complementing Zvonareva's relatively poised and controlled game plan.
The Russian women were able to contribute to an amusing match that lasted one hour and 59 minutes, earning the pair a spot in the semi-final match at the ladies’ doubles.
The knockout of the Williams sisters from the doubles tournament adds another notch to the slew of unlikely eliminations during the tournament, which included Kim Clijsters, and Andy Roddick on the men’s singles side of the draw.
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