What Knee Injury! Serena Williams Says Her Body Is Feeling Great Ahead Of Her Australian Open Defense

What did I tell you few days ago, knee injury, what knee injury?! She just didn’t feel like playing in Perth, very disrespectful, but again, that’s Serena.

January 12th, 2016 at 4:59 pm

Human knee is not made for carrying that much weight and moving around the court.

January 12th, 2016 at 6:32 pm

Actually agree with you Humble Rafa. Even mesomorphs with the sturdiest anatomy and physiology are not without injury risk carrying extra weight whether it’s fat, muscle, or a combination – particularly as we age; or, if subjected to the kind of wear and tear over decades of hard labor and sport.

I’m surprised she hasn’t followed the trend in sport of so many athletes and gone leaner. But she’s dominated WTA, so why change anything. It’s a touchy subject, I suspect.

Gypsy Gal, have been checking here and waiting around to see if Kimberly posted and she might set up the AO bracket.

January 13th, 2016 at 7:03 am

My post still in moderation?

What I’m saying, GG is that I have to pass on doing a bracket challenge. It’s easy enough to set up. If I can do it… cheers.

January 13th, 2016 at 9:10 am

Well if she’s competing next week she doesn’t want her opponents to know that she’s ailing so of course she would say this.

January 13th, 2016 at 10:54 am

IMO She will succeed where she failed last year winning all four GS,a singles gold medal,surpass Graff,and become the greatest female tennis player ever….

January 13th, 2016 at 1:49 pm

Humble Rafa….You surely jest??? She’s won lots of stuff moving around the court on her human knee…..her BIONIC knee, I should say. LOL

January 13th, 2016 at 5:12 pm

RZ,
Trust me, I watched her in Perth, all her interviews and Mouratoglous too, she was so inconsistent and interviews so confusing that I thought that she is not sure anymore if it is right, left knee or some other injury. She pulled out of the first match stating that she will be right for the next day without seeing doctor:) She looked and behaved completely disinterested and that is how she finished her match with Jarmila. It was no any sign of injury, nor in her movements, just not any flair in her game, she was set and the break down and just decided “thank you very much, that was it from Serena, you should be happy that I turned up here at the end of the world”, and then got complicated in her interview with explaining “knee is injured, but it is not injured, will be ok in a few days and so on”.
To be honest, and I said that last week, she didn’t look fit to me, snd it will be interesting to see how she will play in Melbourne without any matches since USO. What I have seen from Azarenka in Brisbane, she is looking very good, improved game and very very hungry, if they are to meet…

January 13th, 2016 at 5:28 pm

GG, no way.

January 13th, 2016 at 5:38 pm

The one player that I really think is injured and might finish career prematurely is Kvitova, few days ago she pulled out of Sydney too on the day she was due to play, her future doesn’t look good and it is pity, since she is a great player and character.

January 13th, 2016 at 5:38 pm

@Wog BOy – I’d love to see Azarenka back in the winner’s circle, and I think she will have a strong run in Australia. As for Kvitova, she seems to be hit by the illness bug quite a bit. I’m wondering if she needs to change her diet, the way Novak and Mattek-Sands did to stop having illness issues.

January 13th, 2016 at 6:30 pm

Man I really hope Azarenka does well. I hate her shrieking but I love her game.

January 13th, 2016 at 6:53 pm

Sean,
Are you going to fix this TX format for mobile phones or it is going to stay like this. It is pain in the neck to read it in the last few days, my finger is overworked moving the screen around.

Sorry for changing the subject but TX means a lot to me and I can’t live without it..

January 13th, 2016 at 8:03 pm

Yes Ben but you will be delighted to know i think exactly the same about Novak,do i want that?no,will i say tennis has become boring because im some secret Novak hater?again no,but i will say its all rather dissapointing for fans of every other player thats all….

January 14th, 2016 at 7:33 am

RZ,Margot or anyone else if your reading,i doubt Kimberly will be around to do a link up to a Bracket challenge for the AO,and Jaleps asked me to do it as she cant do one,so can somebody here do one as i have no clue how to do this please….

January 14th, 2016 at 11:52 am

In other women’s news – Hingis and Mirza just won their 29th straight doubles match. For all the praise on Djokovic, Serena, Federer for hanging in there – the resurrection of Martina Hingis as a champion once again is a great story. If only she had Indian citizenship, she and Mirza/Lee Paes would be getting some gold this summer.

And as Wog Boy said, Azarenka is back and is hungry. Just hope she has worked on her lousy serve in her near-2 year hiatus from being a force in the game.

January 14th, 2016 at 3:34 pm

What i like about Vika is that she matches up well with Serena,and isnt scared and actually relishes playing her, and their matches are also nearly always close….

January 14th, 2016 at 3:43 pm

CF1, it did looked that way too me in Brisbane, her serve had more of the pop and varieties, I think Sascha Bajin is doing good job with Vika after switching the sides, he was doing good with Serena for eight years, I think Serena misses him already.
As Martina/Mirza it doesn’t look good in Sydney since storm interrupted play yesterday, there is little chance they will play today and zi don’t know how they are going to finish tournament on time for AO. I watched Dimitrov vs Dolgopolov match yesterday before it was interrupted, one has to wonder how come neither of them isn’t top10, such a nice, early and clean ball striking and shot making, I thoroughly enjoyed the match, Dimitrov is break up in third.

January 14th, 2016 at 3:47 pm

@GG – let me look into it and see if I can figure out how to set it up.

January 14th, 2016 at 5:56 pm

GG and anyone else interested in a bracket challenge for the AO – I couldn’t figure out how to set up the bracket on Global Tennis Network (which I think is where it was in the past) but managed to get one set up at TourneyTopia (through Tennis Channel). Here is the link for anyone who’d like to participate:

http://www.tourneytopia.com/RacquetBracketAussieOpenATP/TennisXposters/default.aspx

Hopefully Sean, Tom, et al won’t mind that I named it Tennis-Xers Bracket. :-)

January 14th, 2016 at 6:11 pm

Oh and since I set it up, it includes our favorite pic of Andy in a Christmas sweater. :-)

January 14th, 2016 at 6:14 pm

Hi WB, Did you watch by surprise Halep’s match today? I was sleeping and I am curios if she really played bad or she as more diplomatic then Tomic?

January 15th, 2016 at 2:24 am

Ben @6.53
Totally agree. Love her game and fighting spirit but you need to watch with ear plugs in :)

January 15th, 2016 at 7:24 am

WB, if I offended you somehow the other day, it was not my intention. I have a lot of respect for you. I am sorry.

January 15th, 2016 at 10:20 am

@Sarah:

You didn’t offend him, otherwise you’d know it for sure.

Do you know that I watched Virginia Ruzici in the days, when she won RG? She was an imposing, lean and tall woman, and she played a beautiful brand of attacking tennis.

Is she of Serbian origin? Are you, btw? She’s born in a town with a Slavic name, although, most old toponyms in Romania are Slavic.

January 15th, 2016 at 10:52 am

And an interesting link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pBh1WxNj8Y

January 15th, 2016 at 10:58 am

She is born in Câmpia Turzii (have googelt now), well this is a romanian Village, but it can be that she has serbia roots from Ruzic :)

Serbja is our neighbour country, so we have this mixtura sometimes.

January 15th, 2016 at 10:59 am

lol Mat 4, thank you,. Our crazy Ilie Nastase Mat4, you made my day better…and Tiriac . Wow….I am impressed. .You know about the :)

January 15th, 2016 at 11:02 am

One of my grand grandmother was serbian, so I have a bit of serbian blood aswell :)…

January 15th, 2016 at 11:04 am

edit: You know about them

January 15th, 2016 at 11:05 am

câmpie comes from campus, but it means field..so it is more a latin word

January 15th, 2016 at 11:07 am

Mat 4, Slavic languages as Serbian, Bulgarian and Russian hade their influences on our language.
I can tell you for sure, that I can understand Italian without knowing it, but I cannot understand Russian or Serbian…

January 15th, 2016 at 11:21 am

Mat4, I am sorry for the mistakes from the first sentences, I wrote from my phone, now I am at my laptop and will be able to write more appropriate…and sorry for the many lines, I was only to enthusiastic

January 15th, 2016 at 11:24 am

A lot of Serbs migrated to Romania at the end of the XVII century, just like a lot of Vlachs migrated to Serbia a century later. This territory is without clear ethnical boundries — there were even a lot of French in Banat (it’s a very sad story; there were mainly from Lorraine, and I have found a few of their descendants still living in Serbia. There are mainly Croats, today, and some are Serbs), something you probably know, being from Banat yourself.

I googled too to see where she was born. One of the villages had a Slavic name (although it is written in Hungarian in Wikipedia). I don’t know when it was founded, but I can check later.

January 15th, 2016 at 12:12 pm

Sâncrai (Szentkirály) is of Slavic origin.

January 15th, 2016 at 12:15 pm

https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Ruzici

according to romanian Wikipedia she is born in Campia Turzii…it means the field of Turda :)))

January 15th, 2016 at 12:18 pm

Sâncrai would mean Saint King…San comes from saint…crai could be of slavic origins, but we use more the word rege for king, crai not so often

January 15th, 2016 at 12:21 pm

Trust me on this, Sarah. That’s my formation. I studied French, then comparative diachronic phonology (French/Slavic).

January 15th, 2016 at 12:24 pm

We had in Banat also a lot of Germans, Austrian…my mother is an Austrian ethnic…History of Romania is very complicated, and I would not go into details on this site:)…German had also a bit of influence on our language.

January 15th, 2016 at 12:27 pm

Check Campia Turzii.

“Pe Harta Iosefină a Transilvaniei din 1769-1773 (Sectio 110), satele inițiale Ghiriș-Arieș și Ghiriș-Sâncrai apar sub numele de „Gyéres” respectiv „Sz. Kiraly”.”

January 15th, 2016 at 12:27 pm

then there are some Romanians in Vojvodina..they have there a village named Biserica Alba

I will search this with Sâncrai also

January 15th, 2016 at 12:34 pm

Mat4: do you speak Romanian? :)

January 15th, 2016 at 12:35 pm

Mat4, I will go now offline. My boyfriend wants us to spend a nice Friday evening at the cinema :)))
It is a really great pleasure to talk to you ;)

“See you” soon, wish you a lovely evening.

@ RZ, will fill the thing tomorrow. Have a nice evening.:)

January 15th, 2016 at 12:58 pm

Wog Boy, I see you are still struggling with the mobile view.

I’ve found that TX displays fine if I rotate my phone 90 degrees (landscape mode).

Everything scales fine in landscape mode instead of portrait mode.

Hope this helps.

ymmv

January 15th, 2016 at 3:29 pm

@elina,

Thanks very much for the tip, it does help, I’ve never thought of that:)

January 15th, 2016 at 3:50 pm

Sarah,

No, you didn’t offend me, I just missed your question last night before I went to bed. I am trying now to sleep as long as I can since lapinroyal scared me with that 4am waking up thing.

I’ll give you s tip, don’t get into argument with mat4 about the names, last time I did it I’ve got burned..

I know very well Temisoara, where you are from, use to go often there, you were then little girl, that’s why we haven’t met:)
One thing that you will be happy to hear if you don’t know already, is that never ever in the history Romania and Serbia had any problems or wars, which is unusual for the Balkans. When Hitler occupied Serbia and started to carve it up, in order to control it better, and giving the parts of Serbia to neighboring countries, Bulgaria got SE of Serbia, Hungary got Bačka, Croatia took Srem and my Zemun, Albania took Kosmet, well Romania was offered Banat. Romanian answer was, “no thank you, we were friends for centuries and we don’t want anything that belongs rightfully to Serbia, so Hitler had to control Banat himself.
Serbian dinasty, that I respect the most, not much respect for the one that overthrew them in the bloody cup, had their properties in Romania and lived there, it is Obrenovic dinasty and Milos Obrenovic himself.

January 15th, 2016 at 4:11 pm

WB
4 am… go back to bes! (lol, just try not to eat at 4 PM).
Patriotic but interesting! Thk for the free lession on regional geopolitics! Stay awake then!

January 15th, 2016 at 4:30 pm

thanks lapinroyal for being kind to me:)

January 15th, 2016 at 4:42 pm

@WB
NOT that kind. I’m plotting to get Roger back on winning GS… It’s been 3 finals that he is “gifting” to Nole… ^_^

Don’t want Roger to develop a complex (like with Rafa) against Nole too…

January 15th, 2016 at 4:58 pm

Too late methinks!

However, if Novak trips up at any slam, Roger has done himself well to capitalize just like he did FO 2009, Wimbly 09, AO 10, Wimbly 12.

You know what they say… when the cat is away…

(mew)

January 15th, 2016 at 5:16 pm

lapinroyal,
You can be sure thst this time around Roger won’t lose final to Nole…only SF:)
Also, you don’t have to worry abou Roger developing “Nole complex” …not much time left for it ..:)

January 15th, 2016 at 5:19 pm

I will hope that the cat is away then!
^_^

PS: need to look at this draw this WE. Any withdraw??

January 15th, 2016 at 5:20 pm

If you are thinkg and hoping of Nole, no, he is not withdrawing:)

January 15th, 2016 at 5:31 pm

Mat4 im top Lalaland….

January 15th, 2016 at 5:36 pm

lapinroyal, you’re not the only one! :)

January 15th, 2016 at 5:52 pm

Sarah any luck with the bracket challenge?….

January 15th, 2016 at 5:54 pm

arrrgh! Where is Tonya Harding when we need her!!!

January 15th, 2016 at 6:00 pm