Fellow tennis blogger Diane of the Women Who Serve made a good point – we have been so busy praising Justine Henin’s fantastic year, Serena Williams' comeback, the success of the Serbian players, and Maria Sharapova’s magnificent end of the season, that we have almost completely forgotten about Amelie Mauresmo.

Of course, there is a clear reason for that – Mauresmo hasn’t lived up to the expectations this year (the sad fact that proves this is that my last three posts that mention the Frenchwoman are Mauresmo stunned early in Zurich, Mauresmo falls in Stuttgart opener, and Mauresmo upset at China Open). However, Amelie is not to blame for all this, appendicitis and a very long period of recovery, followed by an appendicitis-related adductor strain, kept her off the court for much of the season.

I’m glad Diane reminded us all that Mauresmo is still one of the world’s best players and that with appropriate training she’ll be there to challenge all the players that are now in the focus of attention. The two-time Grand Slam champion will probably have a confidence problem that could hold her back in 2008, but she should be able to overcome that and come back to the top, where she belongs.

I’m looking forward to mentioning Mauresmo in more positive contexts than it was the case in 2007. Allez!

Anna Chakvetadze was named the Female Tennis Player of 2007 yesterday at the National Tennis Awards ceremony in Russia, while the winning Russia Fed Cup team won the Team of 2007 award.

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Former world number one Lindsay Davenport recently talked about her calendar plans for 2008 and Roland Garros is a tournament she will most certainly skip. Davenport, a mother of a five-month-old Jagger, plans to take part in three Grand Slams in 2008 – the Australian Open and Wimbledon are a priority, while she’ll play at the US Open if everything goes according to plan.

“My goals are to be able to play the Australian Open, to get to Wimbledon, play the Olympics and obviously I would love to play the US Open one more time,” said the 31-year-old American. “The French Open has always been a tough grand slam for me and I am not positive I will go there.”

Davenport will start the next season at the ASB Classic in Auckland, New Zealand. (source: On the Baseline, photo: Bell Challenge)

Famous Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica, one of the few directors to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes twice, decided to make Jelena Jankovic’s wishes come true and find her a role in his next movie.

“Jelena is a phenomenal woman, and as far as I’m concerned, she can reckon that she already has a role. Feel free to tell her that I will find some role for her in my next movie. But, not only that, I promise that I will name the latest cherry juice I’m making here in my Timber Town after her and I will put her picture on the label. She has deserved it with her fantastic tennis performance, just as Novak Djokovic deserves to get a street named after him in my ethno village,” said Kusturica. (source: Mondo)

World No.3 Jelena Jankovic and world No.4 Ana Ivanovic, together with ATP players Novak Djokovic and Janko Tipsarevic, will take part in a charity exhibition event at the Belgrade Arena on December 7.

The players and their families initiated the organization of this event. Their goal was to give home fans a chance to watch tennis live, in hope of repeating the spectacular atmosphere of the September’s Davis Cup. The funds raised from these exhibition matches will be divided into four parts and each player will chose to whom they want to give the money.

The program will start at 5 p.m. local time and is set to last four-and-half hours. (source: B92)

Venus and Serena Williams are planning to join forces for the 2008 Australian Open doubles competition. The sisters are always an attraction when they team up, even though their current ranking in doubles is 9999.

The last time we saw them together on court was at this year’s Wimbledon, but then they had to withdraw in the second round because of Serena's injured thimb.

Australian Open tournament director Craig Tiley is very excited to have these two champions play together:

“The Williams sisters in full flight on the same side of the net is one of the great sights in tennis,” Tiley said. “They are also one of the most skilled pairings on the world circuit with an incredibly successful record in doubles.”

The Williams sisters are one of only five pairings in women's tennis history to win a career doubles grand slam. They have won six majors (Wimbledon and Australian Open twice, US Open and French Open) and an Olympic gold medal in Sydney in 2000.

The Australian Open director Craig Tiley announced that the tournament will adopt a three-plus-one challenge system for Hawk-Eye, which means that players will get three incorrect challenges per set and a fourth challenge if it goes into a tiebreaker (a change from this year’s two-plus-one system). In this way it will be highly unlikely that players run out of challenges.

Additionally, the Hawk-Eye technology will be used in Vodafone Arena too, and not only in the Rod Laver Arena as it was the case before.

The 2008 Australian Open will take place January 14-27.

Woohoo, my website works again! You may have noticed something strange going on with Women’s Tennis Blog in the past two days. Well, I experienced a problem with my hosting provider, to be precise, they lost, or deleted, all of my content from October 30th onwards! Yeah, that can happen! And I didn’t have a proper backup (the one I had didn’t work – also not my fault). Therefore, I had to find texts from my deleted posts and insert them and edit them manually one by one. This was not a pleasant experience, but I’ve consoled myself with a saying “it can always be worse”.

I know you’re not here to read about my boring problems, but I had to explain the situation. Anyway, I will continue posting from tomorrow. See ya.

If you’re injured it doesn’t mean you can forget about making a statement — that’s what the modern tennis players are telling us. You need to use bright colors, strange or even symbolic taping.

After securing Taiwan’s spot in the 2008 Hopman Cup, Hsieh Su-wei wore a blue “V” for victory. Serena Williams shocked us all when she showed up at the Sony Ericsson Championships wrapped like a mummy (unfortunately, she had to retire from the tournament because of a knee injury). Maria Sharapova was much more simplistic concerning the shape, but the bright pink color couldn’t get unnoticed (this was at the Acura Classic in San Diego this July; by the way, the shoulder injury is now 100% fine judging from her fantastic performance at the recently-finished tournament in Madrid).

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