Vera Zvonareva will undergo arthroscopic surgery to remove scar tissue on her right ankle, her agent says. She is expected to return in time for the beginning of next season.
Zvonareva, who badly hurt her ankle during her 3rd round encounter in Charleston against Virginie Razzano, couldn't find her amazing form since the incident. She reached several big finals at the end of last year (including the Season Ending Championships), continuing her great form into this year. At the Australian Open, she reached the semis (which she never done before) and then went on to win two titles - the Premier Mandatory Indian Wells and Pattaya.
Coming into Charelston as the top seed and the season's second player (Race Standings) she was a strong favourite to win the title. The Russian came back at Wimbledon. After struggling to win matches, ahe reached the third round, where she had to pull out - ironically - once again against Virginie Razzano. The rest of the season was shettered by the not fully healed ankle, which caused more struggles on court.
Let's keep our fingers crossed, Bepa will comeback strong in 2010!!!
The players party in Beijing looked kinda stiff, but whatever - they managed to gather all the big names there, so give them some credit. At least the players had each other, so that they could to talk to someone. Anyone. Here's the video, that makes it look less boring. Don't get fooled.
For many more photos of teh Players Party click HERE.
- Maria Sharapova's response to Victoria Azarenka's second medical timeout during an epic 2nd round match, which the Russian won by coming back from 2-5 down in the third set, to eventually win it 6/3 6/7 7/5. Is this the reason why later that evening Jelena Jankovic didn't retire against Shuai Peng, though clearly still being injured?
Can we now oficially call 2009 the year of the comebacks. Tennis fans tend to get emotional, when it comes down to comebacks and we've been blessed with amazing ones this year - Kim Clijsters, Kimiko Date-Krumm and Maria Sharapova... They all have been spectacular, but, there is one comeback-kid that kinda tops it all (at least for the Argwus Team) - Jelena Dokic. Her amazing quarterfinal run at this year's Australian Open will always have a special spot in our hearts. Battling through the past, through form and confidence crisis and through her own demons - and that all with tears in her eyes. It's not possible to erase that picture. It wasn't easy for Dokic, even after that fabulous run, coz there was some more suffering ahead of her - mononucleosis. It seems like God chose for Jelena a path to happyness through hell. Now, she once again somehow made it happen - she won the Athens challenger without dropping a set, her biggest title since 2002. In the final she beat Eleni Daniilidou 6/2 6/1, who as you may already figure out is a comeback-kid herself.
Here you get the tournament's trophy ceremony and the speeches of both girls.
Carolina Wozniacki and Aleksandra Wozniak not only met this week on court, but they also spent some time together outside of it. The WTA stars went to check out some sumo wrestling and afterwards got the chance to meet on of the wrestlers backstage. Cool stuff!
This will surely go down as Flavia Pennetta's year. You could see her constantly giving us reasons to talk about her. First she made an unforgettable appearance in the Fed Cup, where she came from match point down to beat Amelie Mauresmo, securing Italy a win against France and by the way causing a scandal when she showed the middle finger to the chair umpire. Then for the milionth time in a row, she reached the final in Acapulco. After a slump in the early part of the year, she showed some sort of form during the claycourt season, just to bow out in the 1st round of the French Open with an injury. Then when it seemed like, she lost her chance to ever make it to the top ten, she won Palermo & Los Angeles (her biggest title to date) in a row, went on a 15 match winning streak, with wins over Maria Sharapova, Venus Williams, Vera Zvonareva and Nadia Petrova. She made the Italian curse go away, by entering the Top 10. At the US Open, she made headlines, when she saved 6 match points to beat Vera Zvonareva in a fantastic night match and reach the quarters of the US Open for the second year running. And if U thought, this was all, then you are all mistaken. Flavia isn't done yet. She gave probably the most commentated and honest interview of the year for the Italian televison. Just watch this (and if you don't understand it, there's a rough translation taken from the www.tennisforum.com).
ROMA. The bigger is the amount of beautiful female players in the tour, the tighter is the connection between tennis players and sex. There were big rumors about Barbara Schett, a very beautiful player from Austria, and her habit of having sex after matches in locker rooms. Well known also the hard date fixed by Francesca Schiavone to someone who was watching her match in the stand. Follows that trend also Flavia Pennetta, who talked without taboos in a interview to the TV show “Le iene”. On a tone serious and facetious in the same time, the beautiful Italian player discusses burning issues, such as sex and doping.
A QUICKIE WITH SAFIN. She started recalling the well known love story with Carlos Moya: “During the tour, we shared the rooms and made not abstinence, we made free sex.” Currently Pennetta is single but she confesses that, in the tour, three or four male players (the latest one was a Brasilian player) tried to sexually accost her, but she refused because she didn’t like them. On the same issue, the Italian player said that Tommy Haas is the most handsome player, but she “ would make a quickie with Safin”. No chances to Federer, Nadal, Del Potro, Yannick Noah…and to Maria Sharapova. She admits that in the tour there are many lesbian tennis players, but she never had advances from female colleagues; then she jokes putting sexy poses, and she admits to have had sex in a locker room, on cement, on grass, and even in a airplane “during a long leg”
DOPING AND TENNIS. She said that Serena Williams always beats her because “she is an animal compared to me” and then said that Italian tennis players are non competitive because they are “not confident”. Then Pennetta doesn’t evade the question about doping in tennis: “I think it exists”. If some tennis player use cocaine, that’s for fun but she never used it. Finally she elects Kournikova as the most beautiful in the tour, and says that, on a aesthetic basis, it’s a big fight between her and Francesca Schiavone.
So, Serena Williams maybe finally gets to shove that fucking ball down somebody's fucking throat. It seems like that someone will be nobody less than the Mother Nature herself.
"I swear to God. You don't know me!"
In an ad campaign for Tampax, Serena will be fighting Mother Nature, while the latter will be trying to bring a monthly gift to the current world No.2, just to throw her off her game - on and off the court. Will Serena be able to outsmart Mother Nature?
Richard Gasquet is now making an ad campaign for Head & Shoulders. After difficult months, where the Frenchman had to stay away from the Tour, because of a failed doping test, he's now trying to start a comeback. Until now he's doing quite good, as he reached the semis in Metz last week.
But don't forget Richard - a good shampoo ain't gonna solve all your problems...
After second round win against Nicolas Kiefer, Rafael Nadal chatted for a while with a famous Spanish actor Santiago Segura and his friend who turned out to be a porn star in Spain ;) Rafa was a little bit surprised but congratulated to him...
This is one of the most hilarious promo-films the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour has ever done in its history. They took a impossibly big football pitch and made Caroline Wozniacki and Flavia Pennetta play tennis on it. But this isn't the best part! Our Two Top 10 players had not only to play tennis, but also roles in this 3 minutes film.
If it wasn't for them playing tennis in the middle of that film, you could have easily made porn out of this one, with the way they were acting. Such a cheap, cheap American porno film. Such bad actress'. The coaches facial expressions also killed me!
So there we got the ultimate proof, that one rally can seriously turn the whole match around. Julien Benneteau was leading Andy Murray 6/4; 2/0 and than this happened...
After that, the Frenchman managed to win only one more game in the whole match. Funny, how one point can win U a whole match...
Kim Clijsters' comeback to the Tour means the organizers will constantly keep her busy. Kim's promo work started with a nice little match against Elena Dementieva in... a fountain!
Both girl are professionals, so they kept saying how "oh" and "ah" this is. This iswhat you would expect from the two of the nicest girls on Tour.
Just have a look at this new Head comercial with Novak Djokovic. Hilarious stuff ;)
"Head brand is known [for] representing young players, which is really good. And the video, I don't know if you had a chance to see it, it was really fun. I made it in Miami. It was a day long shooting, but it was worth it." said Djokovic about this nice ad.
This doesn't even require any comment. Just look at this.
What's more, Roger Federer did not shake the umpire's hand at the end. He lost to Novak Djokovic 6/3 2/6 3/6.
After the match furious Roger just said: "Thank God the hardcourt season is over." We have a bad news for you Roger. Clay won't make your's life any easier.
Last weeks Dubai champion Novak Djokovic couldn't continue his run of form as he got soundly beaten by both David Ferrer and Rafael Nadal. The latter frustrated Nole so much, that the powerless Serb just took his pants off as he couldn't handle Nadal's superb claycourt game. At least the "Funny Nole" is back again with us and not the sad, wooden one!
Let's just hope, that with the return of his good sense of humour, his game will come back too (showing the whole world that the title in Dubai wasn't just a semi fluke)!
Ever since Novak Djokovic has changed his racquet, his career has gone from bad to worse. Though he's still able to beat the lesser ranked players, it's the real deal's that seem to trouble Nole, those one's you don't wanna have a bad head to head record against. Let's not blame his new sponsor HEAD for all of this, with whom Djoko just launched an interactive website called Speed Lessons.
The site is great fun, so if you wanna check it out, just click HERE.
The Sony Ericsson WTA Tour stars like to produce some drama on court. Some of their matches are real thrillers, some have a fairytale ending and some could go straight to Hollywood with their unpredictable scenarios. Now the actresses on tennis court speak about their favourite movies. Check this out!
You no longer can see Jelena Jankovic on court in Dubai (as she lost to Kaia Kanepi 2/6 5/7 in what was, as she described, the worst match of her career), but if JJ is known for anything (and I'm not having the splits on my mind), that is her ever-presence. You can watch her in a HBO promo for BNP Paribas Billie Jean King Cup.
Tennis is a game played between two players or between two teams of two players. Players use a stringed racquet to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt (most of the time of bright yellow colour) over a net into the opponent's court.
The game originated in Europe in the late 19th century as "lawn tennis", but its roots go back to the ancient racquet sport of "real tennis", which itself evolved from an earlier ball game played around the 12th century in France.
The term "tennis" derives from the French word tenez, which means "take it" — a warning from the server to the receiver.
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