Top seed Serena Williams avoided an early exit at the Medibank International Sydney, fighting off four match points against Australia's Samantha Stosur in the first round.

Stosur was serving for victory at 5-4 in the third set, and even earned a 40-0 lead. However, the American leveled, then held her own serve, and then broke Stosur’s serve in the following game to win the match 6-3 6-7 (4-7) 7-5.

Williams will next play either Italian Sara Errani or another home favorite Casey Dellacqua.

Fifth-seeded Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia also survived a scare on the first day of the Sydney International, coming from a set down to defeat Peng Shuai 3-6 6-1 6-3. (via Tennis Head, photo: Tennis Channel)

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Australia's No.1 women's tennis player Samantha Stosur is forced to miss the Australian circuit because she didn’t have enough time to prepare. Stosur was unable to compete on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour for most of the last half of the season due to two serious illnesses and she only resumed training three weeks ago.

The world No.46 has withdrawn from the Australian Open, as well as from her home event, the Mondial Australian Women's Hardcourts on the Gold Coast.

"I always love competing at home in Australia and have had some of my best results here, which makes the decision not to play especially hard," Stosur said. "But I need concentrate on the long-term goal of getting my health and fitness 100 percent again, so I don't want to start competing again until I'm fully ready." (source: Sony Ericsson WTA Tour, photo via Sam Stosur's official site)

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Samantha Stosur won’t play at the next week’s Acura Classic, in order to fully recover from the virus she has been suffering (which also forced her to withdraw from Fed Cup earlier this month). The Australian No. 1 will return to the tour on August 6, at the Tier II event in Los Angeles. (via Stosur's website)

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Australian No. 1 singles player and No. 1 doubles player in the world Samantha Stosur has pulled out of the Fed Cup because of illness. She has swollen glands in her neck and it’s painful for her even just to turn her neck. Stosur is very worried and upset since doctors still don’t know which virus has caused her illness (hopefully they will know when the test results emerge).

Stosur’s withdrawal from the Fed Cup means that the Australian team will have much less chances of defeating the strong Ukrainian team which means that they are highly likely to fall out of World Group II.

The Australian team now consists of Casey Dellacqua, Alicia Molik, Nicole Pratt and doubles specialist Rennae Stubbs, while members of the Ukrainian team are sisters Alona and Kateryna Bondarenko, Yuliana Fedak and Yulia Beygelzimer. (source: Tennis Australia)

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