WIMBLEDON, England — Down they went, first Serena Williams and then her sister Venus. Between them, the sisters had won nine of the previous 11 Wimbledon championships, yet they were both fourth-round losers Monday.
Serena, the defending champion and a four-time winner here, could never get a handle on the slippery serve of France’s Marion Bartoli or compensate for her lack of match play over the last season. Venus Williams, a five-time champion, was sedately eliminated by Tsvetana Pironkova, the Bulgarian who also knocked her out a year ago.
Bartoli, a 2007 Wimbledon finalist, beat Serena, 6-3, 7-6 (6), and the 29-year-old American who left the All England Club a year ago as a dominating No. 1 leaves this year with her ranking likely to sink to about 175 in the world.
Venus went fairly quietly, 6-2, 6-3. Since her upset of Venus here last year, Pironkova has won only nine matches.
And, just to completely scramble the women’s draw, top-seeded and top-ranked Caroline Wozniacki fumbled away her chance to win her first major title, losing to 5-foot-3 Dominika Cibulkova, 1-6, 7-6 (5), 7-5.
The highest-ranked woman left in the draw is fourth-seeded Victoria Azarenka. The only one who has won a major championship is fifth-seeded Maria Sharapova.
Serena pronounced herself satisfied with the results in only her second tournament since injuring her foot last July, undergoing two surgeries for that, and recovering from a pulmonary embolism.
“At the end of the day,” she said, “I think I did pretty good.”
She also got feisty when it was suggested that maybe her loss was a good thing for women’s tennis. After all, Serena was asked, wouldn’t her winning after almost a year off have indicated women’s tennis wasn’t very competitive?
“Yeah,” Williams said, “I’m super happy that I lost. Go, women’s tennis.”
