Singles, Women

17 years after she made her LTA tour début Serena Williams had won every major honour in the sport except one – an Olympic singles title. At the London Olympic she removed this one blemish on her career record with a virtuoso performance of power tennis that never gave any of her opponents even a vague glimpse of a victory. Despite playing four of her six matches against women who had topped the world rankings at some point during their careers, she dropped just 17 games on her way to the gold medal. After defeating current world number 1 Viktoriya Azarenko 6-1 6-2 in the semi-final Williams humiliated Mariya Sharapova in the gold medal match to the point where the biggest cheer of the day came when the Russian won her one and only game in a 6-0 6-1 defeat.

The American became only the second female player, after Steffi Graf, to win a golden slam of all 4 major championships and the Olympic title in singles play and the only player of either sex to do so in both singles and doubles.