Three-time doubles champions and gold
medalists, sisters Serena and Venus Williams lost
an Olympic match as partners for the first time,
by losing in the opening round of the Rio de
Janeiro Games to Czech Republic's Lucie
Safarova and Barbora Strycova by 6-3, 6-4.
The Williams sisters entered Sunday's match
with a 15-0 career record in the Olympics,
winning the gold medal in women's doubles
every time they entered the event: in 2000, 2008
and 2012.
Serena said:
"We played terrible, and it showed in the results."
"I wasn't playing the way I needed to play,"
Serena said. "I wasn't crossing the way I need to
cross."
Neither Safarova nor Strycova, has ever won an
Olympic doubles match, going a combined 0-3
with other partners. They are even unseeded in
Rio while the Williams sisters are seeded No. 1
in Rio.
Strycova and Safarova only had played one
match as a team before Sunday night and they
lost that match which was in a Fed Cup match
last year.
After that defeat, which was her second one in
the Olympics, Venus did not meet with reporters,
because according to the U.S. women's Olympic
tennis coach Mary Joe Fernandez, the seven-
time major singles champion had been sick since
before she arrived in Brazil.