Serena loses, Venus wins, injured Clijsters to skip Wimbledon

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Wilson Blade 9

The current Big Three of women’s tennis, if I may call them that way – Serena Williams, Venus Williams and Kim Clijsters – had very much different Wednesday. Serena lost in Eastbourne, Venus won, while Kim faced the fact that she would have to withdraw from Wimbledon because of her injury sustained yesterday in ‘s-Hertogenbosch.

Serena Williams survived a scrappy first-round encounter with Tsvetana Pironkova, but top seed Vera Zvonareva was a sterner opponent and even though Serena led 6-4 5-4 Zvonareva prolonged the match and won it 3-6 7-6(5) 7-5 after three hours and 12 minutes of play. Positive news for Serena today is her Wimbledon seeding. The defending champion will be seed No.7, which is 19 places higher than her ranking, and will avoid the highest-ranked opponents until at least the quarterfinals.

Venus Williams may have toughed out a three-setter against Andrea Petkovic in the first round of the AEGON International, but in today’s match with Ana Ivanovic, the American faced just one break point, which she saved, and defeated Ivanovic 6-3 6-2. Her seeding at Wimbledon will be 23.

Kim Clijsters‘ news are the worst by far – the injury the Belgian sustained in yesterday’s loss to Romina Oprandi at the Unicef Open will prevent her from playing Wimbledon, which starts next week. During the match, Clijsters injured her right ankle, the very same part of body she injured at a wedding in April. The injuries are not related, though, Clijsters says. A few weeks of staying away from tennis should be enough for her to recover. By virtue of her Wimbledon withdrawal, the rest of the seeded players benefited by moving up one spot. (photos: angela n., Edwin Martinez1)

13 COMMENTS

  1. Venus played well, but Ana’s game is a mess. Girl needs a coach so bad, I watched the match and there are so many things she needs to change that i just don’t know from where to start, probably from her head. If there wasn’t for her serve, I doubt she’d win those 5 games. :S As for Serena, it is really worrying for other girls on tour how better she is than them, even after this injury break. Despite all the flaws she has now (weaker serve, movement and condition) she still could have won this match, and Vera is one of the best players on tour! :O But the match was good, you don’t see every day a womens match in which both sides have about 12 winners more than inforced errors. Although Williams aren’t in their best or better form, in this competition i’d still put them as one of the favourites for Wimbledon title. But there are also Sharapova, Li and maybe Vera.

  2. I was so happy after Vera won. The umpires made so many bad calls going against her. It seems someone was very interested in keeping Serena in the Eastbourne draw…
    Venus did not play well, what for? Ana defeats herself these days, sad as it is.

  3. The Serena/Vera match was a very good one and a very promising for Serena. I think it would be unrealistic to expect her to have won this match. Venus acctually played really well and got her serve going.

    Marine bad calls are part of life. They way you react makes it seems you think Vera is the only player ever to have a bad call…get over it.

  4. “The current Big Three of women’s tennis”!?! You mean of the previous decade? Marija, we are not friend any more! 😉

  5. It was going to be interesting how Wimby seeded the WS (especially defending champ Serena) and likely the All England Club watched to see what form they showed at Eastbourne. The sisters played well enough to allow Wimby to use their discretion to bump Serena up into the top 8 and Venus into the 17-24 group which means that she’ll face 9-16 players in the round of 32 and a top 8 player in the round of 16 (unless the player has already been upset).

    It’s fair that the rest of the seedings align with the player’s rankings thus rewarding them for their successful efforts on the tour. Both sisters should make the 2nd week which is important cause then ticket prices are much higher and more of the general public tunes in and they want to see the top well-known names in action. Wimbly isn’t dumb – a least one Williams in week2 captures a huge part of the American market. Caro as #1 brings a huge audience as well as Li Na etc.

    I’m very glad to see Petra Kvitova as the 8th seed, her RG draw wasn’t terribly taxing energy-wise so she’s relatively fresh having skipped Stuggart, Rome and Brussels. We’ll see how the youngster does in the big slam.

  6. Gregoire, well you know what I meant. 🙂 I said the Big Three because they are the most established champions that have recently been out with injuries so people are watching their results closely. They are the ones that are always considered a threat even if they hadn’t played in a long time.

  7. Wow according to that woman Marine, Ivanovic defeats herself these days, i didn’t know she was a reference on the grass, has she ever won a title on grass or been to the wimbledon final once? waouh
    and she’ll talk like she knows tennis more than us
    by the way i’ll miss Clijsters but her injuries are highly dubious, i clearly don’t buy it, between her lame radiation fears and her decision to intentionally skip the clay season, hmmm

  8. i guess Clijsters wants to prepare herself for the Us open like usual and comes up with another excuse, don’t blame her, she wouldn’t have won wimbledon anyway,one too many low bounces for her.
    See you in north america Kim and heal that supposed injury

  9. Gregoire,bad calls are indeed part of life, but so many in one match??? I doubt this was a coincidence. Now it doesnt matter anyway as Vera won 🙂

  10. Marine, there was only the one major one. Perhaps we could consiprecise about the ’04 USO bad calls against Serena too…

    And Justine calling Kim’s ball out in the AO final and later admitted it was in after her second retirement.

    The list goes on…

  11. Georgie (not Gregoire) when the AO final was discussed over and over again and there were consequences for the umpire,too. The unfair calling against Vera were overlooked. I have seen many players getting bad calls against them in slams, too. There was never so much fuss about it unlike the tirade after UO 2004.

  12. Probably because there were so many in the UO 2004 and most of them were awful. And it was a slam not Eastbourne.

    Now lets not forget about Justine’s hand either…

  13. This was good practice for Serena.she was serving for the match.That goes to show that she is almost there even though Vera won she knows she will not beat Serena at a slam.She is the new Dementieva…always near and yet so faraway

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