Venus Williams crashes out of Rogers Cup Toronto first round

Venus Williams lost her first round match at the Rogers Cup in Toronto on Tuesday to Belgian Kirsten Flipkens 0-6, 6-4, 6-2. This is Williams’ first match since her first round loss at the Roland Garros. The American skipped the Wimbledon Championships due to lower back injury.

“I wasn’t really expecting to play that well in the first set,” Williams said. “So I think that in the second, I just kind of didn’t handle it well. But I was pretty close there to closing that match out and then got down in the third.”

The match seemed headed to Williams’ favor after she won the first set 6-0 but at 4-4 in the second set, things started to fall apart.

“I just really started serving a lot more in the last week, so I’m not really 100 percent on the serve yet,” she said. “So, to me, it was better not to take too many risks and just do something I felt more comfortable with. This week I will definitely be practicing my serve a lot more and getting more confident in it and more comfortable with serving out there. So definitely today my service games I didn’t feel like myself, because usually I step up to the line, I go for it a lot, but I didn’t really feel like I could do that today.”

The 33-year old seven-time Grand Slam champion will be participating next week at the Cincinnati Open and hopefully win some matches to gain confidence for the upcoming US Open 2013 Championships where she is a two-time champion (2000 and 2001).