From The New York Times

Venus Williams joined her sister Serena in making an early exit at Wimbledon on Monday, losing to Tsvetana Pironkova of Bulgaria, 6-2, 6-3.

It was the second year in a row that Venus Williams, a five-time champion here, was eliminated by Pironkova, who won last year's match by the same score to reach the semifinals.

Trailing by 2-4 in the second set on Monday, Williams slammed an overhead winner to earn a break point on Pironkova's serve, then found herself passed down the line with a needle-threading backhand.

When her forehand was called wide, Williams challenged the call and lost. Pironkova served to take a 5-2 lead but Williams wrong-footed her with a beautiful cross-court winner to pull even again. Still another unreturned serve by Williams put Pironkova at game point. Williams surrendered with a forehand that sailed long.

With the match slipping away, Williams muffed a deep overhead smash to trail, 0-15, then watched Pironkova slap four successive forehands for errors, two into the net, two over the baseline.

In the final game, Williams started out by badly misjudging a backhand service return, sending it 15 feet wide of the baseline. Two points later, Pironkoa had a 40-love lead and three match points.

Williams's backhand return for a winner was picture perfect, catching the corner of both lines, but then Pironkova jammed a backhand into the corner and Williams could not recover. Her tournament was over.

If only one statistic pointed toward a reason for Williams's loss, it was her inability to hold serve. She lost it four times over the two sets and managed to break her opponents' serve only once.