Serena’s defeat not biggest shock of tourney

The hysteria was inevitable — Serena Williams’ defeat at Wimbledon was indeed a huge upset. But it was not even the most surprising result of the Championship. Our own Busted Racquet described Serena’s stunning defeat to Sabine Lisicki of Germany in their fourth-round match on ‘Manic Monday’ as “the upset of Wimbledon” — but Tramlines does not agree.
The context of the shock defeat made a real impression: it ended a 34-match winning streak for the defending champion, after all. It was only her fourth defeat in her last 76 contests. It was, make no mistake about it, extraordinary.

But Lisicki’s win marked the fourth time that she has been able to come to Wimbledon and beat the reigning French Open champion. Yes, Serena had been targeting her sixth Grand Slam on grass, but Lisicki has reached the quarter-finals before and is no stranger to big wins at the highest level.

The result was a tremendous surprise —particularly given that Serena led 3-0 in the final set after blitzing the second — but it was not even the biggest upset of the tournament.

The enormity of Roger Federer’s defeat to the unheralded Sergiy Stakhovsky surely trumped it in terms of both significance and shock value.
Lest we forget, this is the man who had previously not lost before the quarter-final stage in his past 36 Grand Slam outings.

“When you’re playing Roger Federer at Wimbledon, it’s like playing against two persons.” — Sergey Stakhovsky, on the mystique of Federer at a place where he’s won seven titles.

Serena and Federer were both defending champions at SW19. The latter’s defeat was the most shocking not due to his unbelievable record in not flopping in the early rounds of Slams, but because of the stature of the two respective opponents.

Only a week earlier, Stakhovsky had lost to the 33-year-old veteran James Blake in the third qualifying round for ATP Eastbourne. That’s right — he could not even progress through to the main draw of a low-key warm-up event.

Stakhovsky is ranked at number 116 in the world; Lisicki is 24th in the women’s standings and always brimming with confidence on the grass courts.
In 2009, Lisicki reached the quarter-finals, a feat she emulated last year before she was defeated by compatriot Angelique Kerber, while in 2011 she reached the last four where she was beaten by Maria Sharapova.

Stakhovsky, meanwhile, has never progressed further than the third round of any Slam and was promptly dumped out of Wimbledon in tame fashion by Jurgen Melzer in his next match.

Federer’s powers may well be on the wane while Serena is at the very peak of her game, but that should not mask the fact that what we witnessed in the second round when the Swiss was unceremoniously beaten by Stakhovsky was the shock of the tournament and, indeed, right up there in Wimbledon history.

Serena identified her loss to Lisicki as forcing her to “go back to the drawing board”, but her career over the last few years would lead us to suggest that this represents just a little blip in the American’s incredible dominance of the women’s game.
For the ‘Artful Roger’, defeat perhaps represents something more meaningful. — Eurosport.