The Winner of the 2007 Australian Open is . . .
Posted by Aaress Lawless on Jan 9, 2007 | Print
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It is not at all wrong to assume that the four Grand Slams would tend to bring out the best competitors and champions on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour.
If the players miss tournaments during the year, they usually try their hardest to make sure that a major is not one of them.
After all, someone will probably not be remembered as the champion of the Regions Morgan Championships & the Cellular South Cup fifty years from now, but a Grand Slam title is a huge boost toward inclusion in the Tennis Hall of Fame.
Unfortunately, this year’s Australian Open winner may just be the last woman left standing.
The 2007 season has only been in full swing for a few weeks, but the top players are already seeing their ranks decimated.
Currently, there are only eleven Grand Slam champions still listed on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour rankings.
Four of them - Justine Henin-Hardenne, Anastasia Myskina, Lindsay Davenport, and Mary Pierce - have already been ruled out of the Australian Open for one reason or another. You might be able to add two more to that list soon as Venus Williams (wrist) and Svetlana Kuznetsova (bronchitis) have question marks hanging over their heads.
Out of a field of one hundred and twenty-eight tennis players, only five former GS champions have guaranteed (at this point) their participation in the Australian Open.
Serena Williams is not playing well enough to guarantee her as the winner of the Tier IV Moorilla Hobart International, so you could probably scratch her name out of the mix as well.
Martina Hingis, on the other hand, is completely fit, completely healthy, and at the moment, completely powerless against any player that has a bigger forehand than her own. She never could go toe-to-toe with power players during part one of her career, so I’m not sure why she thinks that things are any different now.
She still has the weapons that were effective against the likes of Lindsay, Venus, and Serena then, and there is no reason why they will not work now against players like Jelena Jankovic and Dinara Safina, not to mention Maria Sharapova or Kim Clijsters.
So that leaves us with three women who could successfully walk away from the Australian Open with another major title.
Maria Sharapova, Amelie Mauresmo, and Kim Clijsters - this is your time to shine.
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