Key Points
- Serena Williams lost her Wimbledon opener to Australia's Maya Joint 6-3, 6-7(6), 6-3.
- It was Serena's first singles match in nearly four years, on a wild card.
- She led by a break at 2-1 in the third set before Joint won five of the last six games.
- Joint, ranked No. 87, snapped an 11-match losing streak.
Serena Williams's return to singles ended in the first round at Wimbledon. The seven-time champion, playing her first singles match in nearly four years on a wild card, lost to Australia's Maya Joint 6-3, 6-7(6), 6-3 on Centre Court, Olympics.com reported.
Williams led by a break at 2-1 in the deciding set, but Joint — the world No. 87 — won five of the final six games, sealing it on her third match point when Williams sent a forehand long. The win snapped an 11-match losing streak for the 20-year-old, her first victory since January.
At 44 and four years removed from competitive singles, Williams pushed a player less than half her age into a decider before her level dipped. The wild-card experiment produced a competitive match, not a fairytale — the same first-round exit that also claimed the American men's No. 4 seed, Ben Shelton, in a tournament already missing Carlos Alcaraz.
Source: Olympics.com, WTA.
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