Bulgaria's Pironkova Eliminates Venus Williams for Second Year in a Row

Tsvetlana Pironkova of Bulgaria returns to Venus Williams of the US during their fourth round match for the Wimbledon Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, in London, Britain, 27 June 2011. EPA/BGNES

From The New York Times

Venus Williams joined her sister Serena in making an early exit at Wimbledon on Monday, losing to Tsvetana Pironkova of Bulgaria, 6-2, 6-3.

It was the second year in a row that Venus Williams, a five-time champion here, was eliminated by Pironkova, who won last year's match by the same score to reach the semifinals.

Trailing by 2-4 in the second set on Monday, Williams slammed an overhead winner to earn a break point on Pironkova's serve, then found herself passed down the line with a needle-threading backhand.

When her forehand was called wide, Williams challenged the call and lost. Pironkova served to take a 5-2 lead but Williams wrong-footed her with a beautiful cross-court winner to pull even again. Still another unreturned serve by Williams put Pironkova at game point. Williams surrendered with a forehand that sailed long.

With the match slipping away, Williams muffed a deep overhead smash to trail, 0-15, then watched Pironkova slap four successive forehands for errors, two into the net, two over the baseline.

In the final game, Williams started out by badly misjudging a backhand service return, sending it 15 feet wide of the baseline. Two points later, Pironkoa had a 40-love lead and three match points.

Williams's backhand return for a winner was picture perfect, catching the corner of both lines, but then Pironkova jammed a backhand into the corner and Williams could not recover. Her tournament was over.

If only one statistic pointed toward a reason for Williams's loss, it was her inability to hold serve. She lost it four times over the two sets and managed to break her opponents' serve only once.

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