Venus Williams suffers first-round Wimbledon exit

Venus Williams’ 24^th Wimbledon campaign was cut short after she suffered a straight-sets defeat to Elina Svitolina in the first round.

In a match between two wild cards, Williams started strong, breaking her opponent to go 2-0 up in the opening set.

However, things went dramatically downhill after the 43-year-old took a nasty tumble which appeared to aggravate her right knee, which was already heavily strapped.

Despite a medical timeout, Williams’ movement was clearly impaired and she wasn’t able to channel the energy she brought onto Centre Court, eventually losing 6-4, 6-3 to Svitolina.

‘’Grass is inherently going to be slippery,’’ Williams said after the match.

"You're going to fall at some point. It was just bad luck for me. I started the match perfectly. I was literally killing it, then I got killed by the grass.’’

Williams has been plagued by injuries throughout her career, most notably in the past few years, and she acknowledged that, despite it being a ‘speciality’ of hers to play through injuries, that she ‘couldn’t figure it out’.

‘’It's not fun right now,’’ she continued.

‘’I felt like I was in great form coming into this tournament, and great form in the match. It's all very shocking at the moment. This is sports. I'm hitting the ball well.

‘’Hopefully I can just figure out what's happening with me and move forward.

"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've played through a lot of injuries and won a lot of matches injured. It's almost a specialty of mine. I just couldn't figure it out today.’’