Watch More Videos from:
at

Read More Tennis’s News from:

Read More Tennis’s News from:

WASHINGTON (AP)—Serena Williams sprinted along the baseline to smack a cross-court backhand winner, then pumped a fist—a familiar pose. And then she smiled. She didn’t dare glare in the direction of her teenage opponents Thursday, students at the Southeast Tennis and Learning Center.

Yes, Williams did seem rather pleased to be on a tennis court, swinging her racket after months of various physical problems kept her away from her sport. On an adjacent court, her older sister Venus had a racket in hand, too, offering coaching tips and playing points against kids aged 7 to 17 during a 45-minute clinic to help celebrate the center’s 10th anniversary.

What neither Williams was willing to do Thursday is tell the world when they will return to the tour. They both were ranked No. 1, own a combined 20 Grand Slam singles titles—13 for Serena, seven for Venus—and are among the most dynamic and attention-grabbing players in tennis history.

But Venus hasn’t played since January because of a hip injury; Serena has been out since July after two foot operations, then blood clots in her lung.

“I’m feeling better. Just starting training. I’m a little later than I suspected and hoped,” said Serena, who resumed practicing a little more than two weeks ago. “But it’s going steady. Slow and steady, I think, always works out when it’s a race.”

Her last competitive match came when she won her fourth Wimbledon title last summer; she’s missed the last two major championships.

The next Grand Slam tournament is the French Open, which starts May 22.

“It’s a great event, and we definitely want to be there,” Venus said. “We just take it week by week, evaluating, and the good part is we both get better every week.”

Both sisters moved around the court without any visible hitches Thursday.

Their connection to the center dates to before the $5.1 million facility was built, when former D.C. first lady Cora Masters Barry, the center’s CEO, spoke to the Williams’ mother about plans for the center. Their older sister, Isha Price, is a member of the center’s board.

“The center is so important, because for us, it brings us full circle, growing up in Compton, Calif. And coming back to here is similar, because we see young people who really are us,” Venus said. “It’s a great opportunity for us to just really stay grounded and continue to do what’s important, which is to give back.”

Standing nearby as Serena ran kids through drills, Barry said: “It just shows, first of all, that Venus and Serena get who these kids are, as it relates to their beginnings and where they came from. And the kids know that—they get the connection. The kids are pleased by it and inspired by it.”

Price recalled accompanying her sisters—both under 10 years old at the time—on a trip to a California country club for a clinic run by Hall of Fame tennis player Billie Jean King.

“That was their example of how they could also help and effect kids, so any time they have an opportunity to do a clinic—it’s one thing to hit with sponsors, and people who raise money. … You have to do the business side of it,” Price said. “But this is what they’re passionate about.”

Wearing stretch pants with a green-and-white tie-dyed effect, and a warmup jacket with the same color scheme, Serena played more real points than her sister did Thursday, stretching for volleys and racing forward and back.

Venus, dressed all in black, spent more time passing along pointers, talking 1-on-1 with students and giving advice.

“She’s not a yelling teacher,” said 12-year-old Kayla Williams, who lives within walking distance of the center. “She’s, like, a quiet teacher and … she actually shows you, instead of yelling at you and telling you.”

And as excited as she was about the chance to share a court with Venus, Kayla did register one, tiny complaint: “I actually thought we were going to play a match.”

She’ll have to wait, along with everyone else, for Venus’ next match.

Andy Roddick, a three-time victor of Washington’s Legg Mason Tennis Classic, will return for the hard-court tournament this summer, marking his 10th appearance in the event.

Roddick, 28, was a teenager when he won his first Legg Mason title in 2001. He also won in 2005 and 2007. After his third-round ouster to Gilles Simon of France in last year’s event, he received a diagnosis of mononucleosis.

Click here to read the full story at WashingtonPost.com

Read More Andy Roddick’s News from:

at

Watch More Videos from:
at

Watch More Videos from:
at

by Jackie Roe, TW Social Director

Welcome to an early edition of the Deuce Club! Last week, a number of you requested that I put something up in time for the Royal Wedding and I was happy to oblige. (Ask and ye shall receive—that’s how things work in the DC!) But before you work yourselves into a wedding frenzy, check out this special write-up from our very own gauloises, aka Hannah Wilks. She’s been covering the Estoril tournament for Tennis.com—you can read her terrific “Postcards from Portugal” here—and took some time out of her busy schedule to reflect on both her tournament experience and the wedding of the century, just for us. A fun, enlightening read (would we expect anything less from Hannah?). Enjoy, everyone!

Time changes when you’re at a tennis tournament, don’t you find? As you may (or may not) have noticed, I’ve been at the Estoril Open in the suburbs of Lisbon this week, and it’s extraordinarily difficult to care about anything else happening in the world, especially when—in the course of trying to write decent coverage for Tennis.com—I end up rushing from match to match, press conference to caipirinha, expending a wildly disproportionate amount of time and energy in relation to what I actually produce. But seriously, a tennis tournament can become your whole world when you’re spending every day there. Munich? Who cares! Serbia Open? The what Open?! Madrid? Whatever—the real competition is happening here in Estoril.

Actually, I plan—or more accurately am resigned to—spending much of Madrid (it’s next week, right? I don’t even know) curled up under a blanket quietly weeping. You know that feeling you have when you come home from your local tennis tournament unable to believe that it’s going to be a year before you get to see live tennis again (that feeling that often leads to an impulse credit-card purchase of tournament and plane tickets that you can’t possibly afford in order to see some more again sooner than that)? Multiply that feeling by a thousand, and you have what it feels like to wake up in the morning and realize that today you don’t get to write a thousand words on whatever the hell seems interesting to you.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that the wedding of HRH Prince William and Kate Middleton seems like something that is happening on another planet. Even if I was at home, I think I’d still be at a loss to understand people’s excitement; not only do I consider the royal family basically a harmless irrelevance, but I never dreamed about my wedding as a child and don’t want to get married as an adult, either. If I ever wanted to be a princess, it was the sort that put on armor and grabbed a sword and went out to defend her kingdom when in danger. But when my friends in London keep texting me to invite me to either royal wedding parties or anti-royal wedding parties (forgetting I’m in Portugal), there’s no denying such enthusiasm is real. There’s obviously been a swing in sentiment back towards the Royals in recent years, due partly no doubt to the fact that our politicians have been revealed to be lying bastards and partly to films like The Queen and The King’s Speech, but judging by a quick scan of the comments at TW over the past few days, this enthusiasm is world-wide.

So for those of you at TW who are fascinated by the big event, I suggest everyone comments using their “royal name” (you can generate one here, or alternatively take either “Lord” or “Lady,” combine it with one of your grandparents’ name, then for a surname take the name of the street you grew up on and double-barrel it with the name of your first pet—for example, mine would give Lady Violet Broomleaf-Scully) and generally go mad with the virtual Pimms and champagne cocktails. [JR: My name? Duchess Jackie Eugenia Roeskitt of Chicagobury. HA.]

As for the rest of us, whom I hesitate to call the sane minority . . . well, Portuguese TV is covering the event live from 9 a.m. apparently. I shan’t be watching, and will instead be enjoying a splendid quarter-finals lineup in Estoril and trying to decide what to write about (and ignoring the texts from already-drunk friends once again forgetting I‘m in Portugal and telling me just what they think about whatever Camilla‘s wearing). Let’s revive the always-young topic of favorite tennis tournaments to watch live, shall we?

The photos posted here should give you a flavor of the Estoril Open, but they can’t capture its charm. Located in Jamor, a suburb of Lisbon, it is like the city itself an extraordinary mixture of chaotic energy and laid-back pleasantness. Court Central, the stadium, is nice enough, but Centralito—a sunken clay court with stone bleachers rising to colonnades and arches—is almost absurdly beautiful, especially in late afternoon when one side of the court is in shade and the other is bathed by sinking sunlight. The layout of the site is sufficiently Byzantine that everything is close to everything else—walking from the restaurant to Central, for example, you can stop and look down on what’s happening on courts 1 and 2—but intimate enough, divided by palm trees and thick hedges, that whatever space you’re inhabiting feels enclosed and somehow special. The fact that it’s a joint ATP and WTA event means that courts are at a premium and there’s plenty to see even late in the week with a grounds pass. Moreover, your unscripted encounters with players are likely to prove even more satisfying. Yesterday, for example, we saw Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, disregarded, having to push through a crowd of Verdasco fan girls and then explain to a security guard who he was just to get to a practice court. You don’t see that sort of thing at a Grand Slam.

So let’s hear about your local—or favorite—tennis tournament. Where do you go when you can, and what do you love about it? Have you ever seen an unguarded moment from a player that’s become a cherished memory? If anyone has any questions about Estoril or the players that I’ve seen there, I’m here to answer them. And if everyone would rather discuss the royal wedding, that’s fine too. This is a safe space, TW. Go nuts. 

Couldn’t have said it better myself, Hannah. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, and we look forward to the rest of your Estoril dispatches!

Enjoy the wedding and have a great weekend, TWibe!

Read More Tennis’s News from:

at

by Pete Bodo

Believe it or not, I am not going to begin this trip around the tennis world with comments, snarky or otherwise, on the news that Serena Williams is going to record a rap. Given all the factors in play and the nature of the bodacious lady herself, my only comment is . . . What took you so long?

But let’s stay with the WTA and the Williams sisters for a moment.

No News Is Good News

Ignoring the possibility that Serena turns out to be the next Queen Latifah, the news coming out of the Williams family camp these days is uniformly bad. The latest is that neither Venus nor Serena will play in Madrid or Rome, which means that the only chance either will have to get matches before Roland Garros will be in Brussels — a tournament that Venus is apparently eyeing. Serena has yet to make a decision about her return date, and apparently still is recovering from the surprise pulmonary embolism and hematoma she suffered in February.

Kim Clijsters, who injured her ankle dancing at a cousin’s wedding a few weeks ago, is also expected to miss both big clay events. Which raises the interesting possibility that Clijsters and Venus – perhaps even Serena? — will headline the Brussels tournament. If all three players decide to get their Roland Garros prep work done in Brussels, the tournament will overshadow the two big events that preceded it.

I have a sneaking suspicion that if Clijsters is fit to play the French Open, she’ll play Brussels.

I Guess Janko Really Is an “Ambassador for the Game”

It’s a sign of how much Serbia values its tennis players that the government has issued diplomatic passports to Novak Djokovic and his Davis Cup teammates, as well as Serbia’s two top women, Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic. Does anyone else find this weird?

Granted, the burdens of travel these days are especially tough on tennis players and others who travel a lot, but aren’t diplomatic-grade passports supposed to be for. . .diplomats? And doesn’t this give the Serbian players an advantage, small as it may be, that players from other nations are denied, simply because their governments reserve diplomatic passports for. . . diplomats?

Maybe I’m particularly sensitive to this issue because I live in New York, where “diplomats” get away with murder (sometimes, quite literally – or at least rape, assault, and failure to pay $3 million worth of parking tickets collected while night-clubbing).

I understand that those tennis players are icons in Serbia, but I’d like it better if they named bridges after them, or built each one his or her own palace in Belgrade.

Defensive Much?

Jarmila Gajdosova (formerly Jarmila Groth) might have consulted with Donald Young before she started punching out those sometimes fateful 140-characters that make up a Tweet. Apparently angry at suggestions that she married Aussie journeyman Sam Groth merely to obtain citizenship in the Lucky Country, she wrote:

“To people who say bad things about me: I didn’t need get married to become aussie citizen-check the facts… and check the law!”. . .Also, “I got married because I loved sam and did it from my heart not because I am from poor country or I need him for passport!”

I don’t know what the facts are here, but this isn’t the first time this particular issue has come up in all its seedy glory. The most famous of these cases also involved a player from the former Czechoslovakia and an Aussie, albeit not a tennis player. That was Hana Mandlikova, who made very little effort to convince people that her marriage to Aussie restaurateur Jan Sedlak (by lineage, apparently also a Czech) was a match-madein heaven — unless it was immigration heaven.The Wikipedia entry for Mandlikova doesn’t tap dance around the issue, either, although it’s worth noting the call for additonal citations.

Whatever the case, I suppose it’s the business of the couples involved. The noteworthy part is Gajdosova’s reaction to the rumors.

Today Queens, Tomorrow the Wor. . .Wimbledon!

You saw where Prince William and Kate Middleton, who will be married tomorrow in a ceremony in which I have not the least bit of interest, played mixed doubles at Queens Club, site of the ATP Aegon championships, the major Wimbledon tune-up tournament. Apparently, Kate’s sister Pippa is a Queen’s Club member. Who knows, if Kate gets to be Queen of England someday, perhaps Pippa could trade up and become a member at the All-England Club.

A Queens Club member who caught glimpses of the mixed doubles match sniffed:  “I thought with all her sporty, boarding school background she (Kate) would be rather good, but she was a bit hit and miss. She reminded me of Princess Diana. Mind you, she was better than William, who was very wooden. Still, there was no bickering between them.”

Of course not. Couples who play mixed only begin bickering in earnest once they’re married, right?

Someday Devvarman

Someday apparently is now for Somdev Devvarman, the two-time NCAA singles champion. In case you hadn’t noticed, Somdev slipped through to the third round in Belgrade today, taking out no. 3 seed Guillermo Garcia-Lopez in an excruciatingly tight third-set tiebreaker, 10-8.

I took a shine to Somdev after watching him at the US Open a few years ago; I’m not even sure why. I suppose I liked his fighting spirit and his clean game. What he is, I think, is the ideal underdog. You watch him against most anyone these days and you just naturally sense that he’s over-matched (on paper) but so game that you can’t ever write him off. At 26, he’s not a kid anymore, which must make his current form all the more gratifying. In recent weeks, he’s logged wins over Milos Raonic, Xavier Malisse, Janko Tipsarevic, and Marcos Baghdatis (I know, I know, everyone beats Baggy these days).

Devvarman is no. 71, no great shakes, right? But sometimes it’s good to acknowledge guys who are doing great within their own playing ecosystem, even if they’re not apt to make headlines.

Beauty and the Beast

Brad Gilbert wrote one of the great tennis books in recent times, his wonderfully conceived and titled Winning Ugly. It’s a book that will improve anyone’s game, but especially if you’re one of those idealistic types who wants to play “like you’re supposed to” (which is like Roger Federer or Serena Williams), and therefore doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hail of going two rounds in the town tournament because. . . he or she isn’t Roger or Serena. Winning Ugly is a great book for those who have yet to come to the adult realization that winning beats losing, no matter how you get there short of cheating.

The other day, Gilbert told IMG Academies that the player who most closely adheres to the principles he espouses in his book is. . . Caroline Wozniacki. So I suppose those who denigrate her for playing a game that’s essentially defensive, and based on consistency, anticipation, court sense and strategy can feel justified in their contempt for her abilities. But as Gilbert, one of that rare breed we can call “exuberant realists” (for realism and gloominess go together like Nadal and clay), says:

“The person that I like to watch the most because so many people talk about how she doesn’t have any weapons and that there is no dominant woman’s player is Caroline Wozniacki. She is a great counterpuncher, she works hard every match, and she is just doing as good as she can do. I love watching because she doesn’t have the biggest shots. She works hard, gives 100%, and she is No.1 in the world because she is out there winning the most matches. She is one of my favorites.”

I never in my life thought I’d think of Gilbert and Wozniacki as birds of a feather in any way having to do with “pretty” or “ugly.” But the nice thing about life is that it’s full of surprises.

Read More Tennis’s News from:

at

Read More Andy Murray’s Tweet:

at