When Serena Williams withdrew from the Hopman Cup it was hinted that she could also skip the 2011 Australian Open, but now it is official that Serena will not be defending her title at the Grand Slam in Melbourne. The reason is again her foot injury, which has been standing behind her withdrawals from tournaments ever since she won Wimbledon in the middle of the past season.

Here’s part of Serena’s statement:

As I recently learned, pushing myself back into my intense training too early only caused me further injury and damage. While I desperately want to be back on the court and competing in the first Grand Slam tournament of the year, it is imperative for my health that I continue to work with my doctors to ensure my foot heals properly. This decision, though heavy on my heart, is the right one. I am praying for a healthy recovery and I promise my Aussie fans and my fans around the world that I will be back better than ever as soon as I can be.

As you can see, the actual moment Serena will finally come back to competitive tennis is still absolutely unknown. (source: Tennis Australia, photo: burntfilm)

We have shared with you so many photos of women's tennis players when they were kids, but strangely, we never got to feature the Williams sisters. There is an abundance of beautiful photos of this unprecedented pairing.

Actually, we once included a cute picture of little Venus Williams in a shopping cart surrounded by tennis balls. Read more »

The 2011 season has not even started and we have players withdrawing from the tournaments in the year to come. The Hyundai Hopman Cup, mixed doubles event to take place in Perth in January, will most probably not have Serena Williams in the field because of her well-known foot injury which has been preventing her from playing tournaments ever since Wimbledon.

Here’s what I read at Sportsnewsfirst.com.au:

Sportsnewsfirst.com.au understands Williams has told organisers she will not be attending the mixed team event because of injury, and they are now scrambling to find a replacement.

The American, who has fallen from No.1 to No.4 in the rankings during her time off, was seen last week in Miami on crutches, and with her right foot in big plaster. Though, she did recently take a photo of herself exercising in the gym (just days before Miami). (photo: Ralf Reinecke)

Serena Williams is exercising and you may have overlooked that fact, but Serena made sure we all noticed her efforts. The outfit she chose for the gym time will make us never forget her workout. She's wearing colorful neon shoes, lace leggings, black leotard, and handless gloves, I would say made of leather.

Is it a good tip from Serena if you want to spice up your boring daily routine?

And in case you thought it was someone's paparazzo photo, no no, Serena herself shared it on Twitter.

Twitter is huge these days and a lot of women’s tennis players are active there so you can get a lot of first-hand info if you follow what they are tweeting. To make it easy for us to be up-to-date with what WTA players are saying, I made a cool widget which compiles all the players’ tweets, and you can see it even if you don’t have a Twitter account.

My list currently includes 35 players such as Caroline Wozniacki, Victoria Azarenka, Serena Williams, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Daniela Hantuchova, Dominika Cibulkova, Venus Williams, Andrea Petkovic, Vera Zvonareva, Kim Clijsters, Sania Mirza, Bethanie Mattek Sands, and many others, and I will add more as more players join Twitter.

To see what players are saying just visit Women’s Tennis Blog and scroll down to the widget located below the fourth post on the homepage. It looks like this:

I hope you like this new addition to Women’s Tennis Blog. If you think I missed out on someone, let me know and I will add them to the list! (photos: Ralf Reinecke, Women Who Serve)

Our reader Milano predicted the year-end WTA singles rankings in the comments of this blog and I decided to make a post out of those comments so that more people get to see Milano's thorough prognosis. Feel free to add your view of the rankings below in the comments section.

The only one who can eventually take No.1 ranking from Caroline Wozniacki is Vera Zvonareva. That will happen only if Wozniacki doesn't gain any points at the Sony Ericsson Championships in Doha and Zvonareva wins the whole thing without losing a single match. Chances are quite minimal, of course.

When Serena Williams' Doha points fall off she will be No. 5 by default, but if other players behind (Jelena Jankovic, Francesca Schiavone, Samantha Stosur) do really well in Doha, she could fall as low as No. 8, or even No.9 if Elena Dementieva suddenly wakes up and reaches semifinals at least. But these are big if's.

I think that Kim Clijsters and Francesca Schiavone have the best chance to move up the rankings. I think we will watch an interesting battle for No. 2 year-end spot between Zvonareva and Clijsters (or even Schiavone).

Stosur needs to win (just) two matches to reach No. 6 in the world. Jankovic and Stosur are in terrible form, so I don't think they will do any good out there with top players. Jankovic lost at the Kremlin Cup to No. 268, Zarina Diyas 6-1 6-2, she is feeling ill, she is going to have an eye surgery by the end of the season. I'd say she is the weakest Doha player right now.

Venus Williams will have around 5000 points by the end of the year, just like her sister (Serena will have around 5100). Schiavone has 5035 points now but she will automatically gain 210, even if she loses all three of her round robin matches in Doha. That means that both Williamses will be ranked No.5 or lower by the end of the year, with Serena in front of Venus.

The latest qualifier Victoria Azarenka will have to do something really big to make a move up the rankings.

It is Victoria Azarenka who has benefited from Serena Williams' withdrawal from the Sony Ericsson Championships, taking the last eighth berth in the singles draw.

Even though Li Na is currently ranked higher in the Race to the Sony Ericsson Championships, with five points more she is one spot ahead of Azarenka, but Li lost in the first round of this week’s Kremlin Cup while Azarenka moved into the second round with a victory 6-4 2-6 6-1 over Andrea Petkovic. Li is now the first substitute.

It will be the Belorussian’s second straight appearance in Doha. Last year she lost in the round-robin stage – she defeated Jelena Jankovic, but lost to Caroline Wozniacki and Agnieszka Radwanska. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

We were wondering whether Serena Williams would finally recover from an infamous visit to a restaurant and show up for the prestigious and luxurious Sony Ericsson Championships in Doha where she is nothing less than a defending champion, but the American’s recent resurgence of her foot injury is still her reality and the latest news is that she won’t play tennis for the rest of the season. The fact implies that Serena will skip the Fed Cup final against Italy in San Diego in November.

Can someone who is better at maths than I am calculate how Serena’s skipping of Doha will affect the rankings? How much will it stabilize Caroline Wozniacki at No.1?

There’s one more thing, Serena’s withdrawal is leaving one spot open in the Doha draw and the top contender for that berth is China’s Li Na, who is ranked 10th in the Race to the Sony Ericsson Championships. (Update: Even though Li is ranked higher in the Race, Victoria Azarenka has now qualified and Li is the first substitute.)

Reminder: Serena’s sister Venus had also withdrawn from both the Sony Ericsson Championships and the Fed Cup final.

The $4.55 million Sony Ericsson Championships start next week, on October 26th. (photo by our reader Jacob)