The Russian pin-up admitted she sought solace from her mother Yelena after being humiliated 6-1, 6-2, despite going in as top seed and world number one against an unseeded opponent ranked 81.

Sharapova said she was disappointed at losing a Grand Slam decider for the first time after winning both her previous appearances in the final of a major, at Wimbledon in 2004 and last year's US Open .

The ultra-competitive 19-year-old said she always hated losing but Saturday's drubbing was particularly galling since it was her mother Yelena's birthday and she wanted to dedicate the win to her.

"I'll be honest with you, I don't like losing. You all know that," she told reporters.

"It's not fun. You go back in the locker room (thinking) 'darn it, I just lost, someone is celebrating over there, they're going to be opening a bottle of champagne'."

Sharapova said her mother had told her to use the loss as a motivational spur in the future, rather than allowing it to haunt her.

"These moments make you stronger, not necessarily now," she said.

"When I win or lose, I always call my mom. She always tells me, 'Look, you got a tournament next week, you've got to focus on that'.

"'You're going to remember this day in your future, in your career when you're going to look back and say this really taught me something, this only made me stronger, this has happened many times.'

"Unfortunately, it was my mom's birthday today and I couldn't win for her. But she still made me happy, made me realize this is just another loss."

Sharapova said Williams had made the most of her chances and ruthlessly punished her errors.

"She came out today and she really played flawless tennis," she said. "Maybe you personally gave her those chances ... but on the other side she still had to do it, had to go out and play well, and she did."

Sharapova said she knew she was in trouble when Williams broke her first service game.

"From then on, when she's serving pretty big and pretty consistent it was tough to break her," she said.

The Russian added that she tried to get back into the match by getting Williams involved in rallies but the American kept coming up with winning shots.

"I was just trying to find a little door opening that maybe I could get through, try to get in the rallies a little bit, which was difficult because we didn't really have enough of long rallies for me to really like try to grind it out or fight it out," she said.

"So it was just really a matter of serving well and returning well. And I didn't think that I did either well."