john on Monday, January 23, 2012 reviews [0]

Serena Williams shocked the tennis world yesterday as she was blasted out of the Australian Open 2012 in straight sets by Ekaterina Makarova, 6-2 6-3. It was Serena Williams‘ worst performance at the Australian Open, having only won 5 games in total. Serena made a huge number of unforced errors as she almost gifted the match to the Russian. Williams summed it up perfectly:

“I made 37 errors. That kind of tells the story of the match.”

There were plenty of excuses from Serena Williams after the match. Perhaps it was the ankle injury, the fitness levels, or was it the heat? No, it seemed to be everything:

“It was just disastrous. I served horrendous; that was one of the 50 things [that went wrong]. Every ball that came, I just hit it as far out as I could. But I feel like I definitely can play so much better. And that’s good. Like, if I felt like I couldn’t play better, then that would be a problem. It was definitely hot out there. I guess I just didn’t move the way I wanted to. I probably shouldn’t have played. But [if this wasn't a slam] no way would I have played.”

There are now no American players left in the quarter finals, which shows the state of American tennis at present. In the men’s game, US tennis has struggled to replace Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras since they retired, whereas in women’s tennis, the dominant days of Serena and Venus Williams look to be well and truly over.

Source: The Guardian