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Serena Williams: Australian Open
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Serena Williams will not be participating in the upcoming Proximus Diamond Games in Antwerp. Tournament officials confirmed on Tuesday that Williams, who recently withdrew the Open Gaz de France, will not be making the trip to Belgium for next week’s Tier II tournament.
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Serena Williams has won numerous singles and doubles titles at Grand Slam events (the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open). Below are listed her victories through the end of the 2003 season:
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Serena Williams is only the second unseeded woman to win the Australian title in the Open era. Williams, who defeated top seed Maria Sharapova 6-1, 6-2 in Saturday's final, came into the tournament ranked No. 81 after missing most of last season because of a knee injury.
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Following her Australian Open win, plagued by injuries and mental exhaustion, Serena failed to win a title in 15 consecutive tournaments. She fell out of the top-100 players in the Association of Tennis Players (ATP) world rankings for the first time since the mid-1990s. Some critics claimed she was out of shape and over the hill. In January 2007... she proved her critics wrong by overwhelming Sharapova, 6-0, 6-2, to win her third Australian Open championship.
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On September 11, 1999, Serena won the U.S. Open after performing outstandingly throughout the tournament. She is the first African American woman to claim a Grand Slam singles title since Althea Gibson in 1958. After the tournament, she received a call from President Clinton and ... talked to the president's daughter, Chelsea. The prize for the tournament was $750,000.
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Serena became a professional tennis player in September 1995 at the age of 14. Because of her age, she had to participate in non-WTA events at first. Her first professional event was the Bell Challenge in Québec, and she was ousted in less than an hour of play. By 1997, ranked number 304 in the world, she upset both Monica Seles and Mary Pierce at the Ameritech Open in Chicago, Illinois, recording her first career wins over top 10 players. She finished 1997 at No. 99 in the world.
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