Seventh seed Coco Gauff and five-time Wimbledon champion Venus Williams are out of the running to become 2023 Wimbledon champions after suffering defeats in the first round.
Gauff was beaten 6-4, 4-6, 6-2 against former Australian Open Champion Sofia Kenin on July 3, 2023. Kenin’s impressive win was her first in a grand slam match since 2021.
In response to her success, Kenin said: “I can’t even talk. I’m super happy. Coco played a tough match. I knew I needed to play my best in order to win.”
The former world number four targeted Gauff’s weaker forehand and sustained a relentless approach with clean ball striking throughout.
“I knew it was going to be a tough first round for me. I tried my best, but it wasn’t enough. I think I have a lot to work on if I want to improve from this,” stated Gauff.
Venus Williams faced Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina on July 3, 2023 and also failed to secure her progression to the second round.
Williams initially started off strong, winning the first two games in the first set. She soon after became injured after a painful fall, injuring her right knee which had also given her problems in a previous match against Camila Giorgi.
The 43 year-old fought vehemently but eventually Svitolina took control, advancing in the following straight sets.
Williams admitted she was in so much pain it was difficult to focus on the match: “Grass is inherently going to be slippery. You’re going to fall at some point. It was just bad luck for me.”
She went on saying, "I started the match perfectly. I was literally killing it, then I got killed by the grass. It's not fun right now. I felt like I was in great form coming into this tournament, and great form in the match."
"I think what makes this one hard to process is I've had so many injuries. I've been missing from tour for quite a while. This is not what I want for myself. This kind of fall, I didn't do anything wrong. I just went for the ball. There's nothing I can really do about it."
"Those kinds of things are hard to process emotionally, mentally and physically on the court. I just couldn't figure it out today. It was just real challenging. I've played through a lot of injuries and won a lot of matches injured."
Svitolina, who is staging her own comeback this year after sitting out last year’s tournament due to the birth of her first child, proved she is still a top contender and would not go easy on Williams.
However, she admits she was extremely worried about the veteran when she suffered her injury: "She screamed really loud, I was shaken up,” she said. “I was really shocked in a way, because I thought it was really, really serious."
“So I was really happy for her actually that she could stand up after and didn’t take a medical timeout. I was really happy, because it’s such a horrible injury, the knee injury. Any injury is bad, but, you know, she screamed really loud. So I really got scared.”
