Black Tennis Pros

In what was one of the strangest retirements from a match that I've ever witnessed, on Wednesday at the Sony Ericsson Championships during a second round match between Russian Dinara Safina and Serbian Jelena Jankovic, a sobbing and clearly overwhelmed Dinara Safina simply began crying, walked over to the official, retired, shook her opponents hand and made her way off court. It was heart wrenching to see.

We were later informed that she had been struggling with a back injury for three months and had been taking cortisone injections.

Safina said she will be sidelined for at least six weeks and is struggling to compete in the opening grand slam of 2010 in Australia.

"My body just gave up. I did everything possible to play. I went to have a cortisone injection, but I couldn't handle the pain anymore," Safina told reporters.

Hopefully she will have a speedy recovery.

On the flip side, the woman that caused all kind of ruckus earlier this year when she stated "we all know who the real number one is, will indeed be the real world number 1, again, come Monday, November 2.

After playing a very tight match against big sister Venus, and then being asked if she knew that she would regain the number one ranking Serena said," It's a great feeling to be world number one, but I feel really sorry for Dinara. She's a great player and never gives up."