ok, its not even December, but there's already the first big news for the next season:
Serena Williams is forced to miss the Australian Open due to her foot injury.

Not sure where to put this, but check out this article:



It's a table of what the winning percentage is for the server at any point in a game. So, at 0-0, the server wins the game about 73.8% of the time, from 0-40 down, the server still wins 15.0% of the time. And from 40-0 up, its a 98% proposition. Nothing terribly surprising; but it's cool to put numbers to something we all have in our heads.

And after you go through that, here is the same idea except for a set, given the score in games won:

Radwanska's racket problem:

It's the deadpan reaction that makes it so funny.

Vera Zvonareva just won a second set tiebreaker and the match against Lucie Safarova, 11-9. It was the end to what was a really fun and competitive second set. The difference was a point overturned by Hawkeye at 9-9 that swung the tiebreak in Vera's favor. Vera hit a cross court backhand that clearly swiped the line, but the line person and the chair (the hapless Alison Lange) missed the call. It was striking how similar the point was to the huge point at *3-4 in Daniela's loss to Kulikova. But Vera had hawkeye and Daniela didn't, which changed everything.

As an aside, Daniela's ball was truthfully a bit tougher to call than this one. Still, it goes to show that winning and losing is often a difference of centimeters.

It seems that there are terrible line calls every single match this tournament. It's nice that the Australian Open give jobs to disabled people but blind people should have their guide dogs to help them if they're line judges.

Daniela had so many calls go against her against Kulikova, it was a match that really made me wonder about the competence and integrity of the officials because pretty much anything close went against Daniela. I can take Daniela losing if it's fair and square, but I'm still really bitter about this.

If Indian Wells can put Hawkeye on every court, it's disgraceful that only two courts at the Australian Open have Hawkeye.

Justine Henin has retired from professional tennis.

Caroline Wozniacki's back to no. 1 after getting to the Dubai semi-final.

Patty Schnyder retires: