"It didn't work out the way I wanted it to," Williams said. Facing an unheralded opponent who at times couldn't seem to miss, Williams had problems right from the start, when she got broken to fall behind 2-1 with a badly missed overhead into the net. That set a pattern. By the end, Svitolina had won 63 points, but merely nine came via clean winners of her own doing. The others came thanks to Williams' 37 unforced errors and 17 forced errors. "The better player won," said Williams, who did not take questions from the media after the match and instead did a brief interview with a US Tennis Association spokesman who shared the audio with reporters.
After winning golds in singles and doubles at the london Olympics, Williams heads home from Brazil with nothing. She and her older sister Venus, who sat in the stands, lost in the first round as the No. 1 seed in women's doubles — their first defeat in the Olympics after going 15-0 with three Golds.
The 20th-ranked Svitolina never before played in the Olympics and only once has been to a major quarterfinal. She also entered the night 0-4 against Williams, an owner of 22 Grand Slam singles championships.
"Unreal feeling," Svitolina said after the biggest win of her career, adding: "It's so special to beat her here."
Their most recent match came at the French Open, and Williams won 6-1, 6-1.
Screaming "Come on!" after some points and "Ahhhh!" after others, waving her arms either to celebrate or remonstrate herself, she held, then broke, to pull even at 3-all in the second set. And then one of the greatest fighters in her — or any other — sport simply faded down the stretch.
Oddly so, too, with that five-double-fault game; she finished with eight. At one point in the game that ended with her getting broken to trail 4-3, Williams leaned forward and tapped her racket twice against the court. She did, however, refrain from smashing it the way she had a night earlier, cracking the equipment against her sideline chair during a ragged first set.