The United States suffered a huge blow in women’s doubles tennis on Sunday, as top seeds Serena Williams and Venus Williams fell to the Czech team of Lucie Safarova and Barbora Strycova in straight sets, 6-3, 6-4. It was their first-ever Olympic doubles loss.
Olympics 2016 tennis results and scores: Serena and Venus Williams upset in 1st round of doubles play
Serena will continue on in singles play, but Venus is done in Rio after being eliminated from both singles and doubles play.
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The Williams sisters haven’t been doing a ton of doubles competition in recent years, but got back in the swing of things at Wimbledon where they won the championship together just weeks ago. But they looked completely out of sorts against Safarova and Strycova on Sunday, missing shots and generally looking anything but top seeds.
For Venus, it puts an end to a disastrous Olympic campaign for her. She was the fifth seed in the singles bracket, but lost her opening round match to unseeded Kirsten Flipkens. Serena, fortunately, breezed through her opening round opponent, Daria Gavrilova, earlier on Sunday.
It’s been a rough go for US tennis overall in Rio. On the first day, three of the four men’s singles competitors for the US were eliminated, with only Steve Johnson advancing. The women’s doubles team of Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Coco Vandeweghe did advance to the second round with a straight sets victory on Sunday, so that’s good, but they are not expected to compete for a medal.
Then again, they were not expected to advance while the Williams sisters fell.
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