Black Tennis Pros

Let's start with one of my favorite Americans, Venus Williams... it was such a rough day at the office, to say the least, for her and her fans. Venus came out and whipped all kinds of tennis beat down on China's Li Na in the first set, to the tune of 6-2, it was merciless.

At the end of that set it pretty much became a foregone conclusion that Venus would more than likely be headed for a meeting with younger sis Serena in the semifinals. Then, the very weird and strange occurred, the second set.

Somehow, someway... Venus managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, it was an unbelievable spectacle. Not only did her game fall apart right before our very eyes, Li Na was playing like she had just discovered tennis also. And yet she... won? With a score of 2-6, 7-6(7/4), 6-2 Li Na joined the elite of the grand slam semifinal.

There was truly no real winner of this match, only an outcome, it was depressing. Somebody please cue up the song "Mama said there'll be days like this..."

It was so difficult to watch Venus so out of sorts in an element of her life where she knows such perfection.

Post match Venus said that it was a bit early to really make a determination of what went wrong, but when asked about returning she stated, “Absolutely [I’ll be back]. I really love this tournament ... Like I said so many times before, if I would have, you know, kind of gotten involved in what people said I would have never left the ghetto. So here I am playing pro tennis, playing well. The sky's the limit in this sport.”



Next up was American Serena Williams who very unfortunately appeared to be continuing what big sister Venus started, defeat. Although there was a very distinct difference in the matches. Serena's opponent, Belarusian Victoria Azarenka, came to play. Unlike Li Na, Azarenka's game was on point and taken to Serena with everything necessary from the onset. Azarenka was a real force in the first and second sets, so long as Serena didn't utilize her super powers.

Down a set at 4-6 and 0-4 in the second set as well, it looked as if the Williams sisters were history at the 2010 Australian Open. And then, unfortunately for Azarenka, Serena opted to use her super powers: conviction, iron will and absolute refusal to go down without a fight.

Once invoked, we saw Serena turn Azarenka's well-earned lead slowly chipped away until Serena had taken the second set in a tie-break. We all knew that it all over for Azarenka at that point. Primarly because we've seen Serena do this time and time and time again. It was a thing of beauty.

In the post match interview Serena said, “I’m surprised. I’m just happy to still be here. I didn’t expect to win when it was 0-4. I was like, ‘oh well, at least I’m still in the doubles’.”

When asked about Venus's loss she said, "Yeah, I just try not to think about it too much. It was obviously on my mind. Just tried to do what I could ... obviously I was incredibly disappointed. Yeah, just try not to deal with it."


What can you say, what can you say, what can you say? Tsongaaaaaaaaaaa!

Wow... what a performance, and boy did we need it after the first three quarterfinal matches. This lived up to every expectation and more. Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Serbian Novak Djokovic provided a well contested, great shot making, fabulous rallies, down to the wire match - great stuff.

In a re-match of the Australian Open 2008 final – which Djokovic won in four sets – Tsonga recovered from a disastrous third set before gaining confidence against his increasingly ragged opponent, triumphing in five sets for the second match in a row by a scoreline of 7-6(8), 6-7(5) 1-6, 6-3, 6-1.


Speaking on court after the match, Tsonga said that he felt like he could keep going. “I think I was just in a good form, I might be better than him (in the end). He played unbelievable in three first sets, he was amazing. Finally I won, and I am happy with that.”

Tsonga will take on world No. 1 Roger Federer in the semi-finals after the Swiss champion ousted No. 6 seed Nikolay Davydenko in four sets earlier on Wednesday. Tsonga said he was hoping to use the crowd’s energy to assist him during the daunting assignment.

“Yeah, I will be ready, I hope you (the crowd) will cheer for me a bit,” he joked.

“It’s going to be tough, because he’s the best player ever.”

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Congratulations!

Black Tennis Pro's is happy to announce Philip Pugh of Lewisville, Texas as the winner of the "Early Bird Gets The Ring" Giveaway; Philip's name was drawn in a random drawing held on Sunday, January 24.

As stated in the promotion, he will receive the very beautiful Famous Pavé Dome Lucky Ring from the Serena Signature Collection.

Thank you for participating Philip!

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Try as he may, Frenchman Gael Monfils was not able to raise his level of play sufficient to overcome the game of American John Isner. Isner barraged Monfils with 26 aces to pull off a 6-1, 4-6, 7-6 (7-4), 7-6(7-5) upset.



American doubles team of Venus and Serena Williams continued there AO doubles success defeating Ioana Raluca Olaru of Roumania and Olga Savchuk of the Ukraine 6-1, 6-2 to advance to round three.

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American Raquel Kops-Jones, partnered with Great Britain's Sarah Borwell, did not enjoy the same success. They were knocked out by Argentine Gisela Dulko and Italy's Flavia Pennetta 7-5, 6-2.

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Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga has sent a powerful message to his opponents in his 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 win over American Taylor Dent on Thursday night at Hisense Arena.

Tsonga thumped 42 winners and had only 10 unforced errors in his 101-minute effort. For Dent, the stats weren’t as appealing, as he offered seven double faults and 33 unforced errors as he tried to keep the pace with his power-laden opponent.


With a 6-2, 7-5 win over Austrian Sybille Bammer, American Venus Williams advanced to the third round. Venus hit 32 winners to Bammer’s four and seven aces to none.

Venus later commented that, "Playing two lefties in the first two rounds is a little unusual, but I was up for the challenge."

"She's a really good player and a really good athlete. Her game is a little bit different from most people, so you really have to be a little more patient because she's hitting a kind of a moonball almost.

"It's a little bit different, so I just had to just make sure I stayed on my rhythm -- I'm happy to be through."

Serena Williams did likewise by defeating Czech Petra Kvitova 6-2, 6-1 in just an hour and seven minutes. Post match Serena said, “I thought today was a little bit better than my match in my first round. I felt like I was moving better and I had better energy. I felt like I could have actually played a lot better today. She was definitely taking it to me, though. That was really good for me to play a lady like her.”



Donald Young's Australian Open hopes were cut short by Australia's Lleyton Hewitt in a 7-6 (7-3), 6-4, 6-1 defeat. Young began the match very strong but was unable to match Hewitt's onslaught and the games as well as the match slowly slipped beyond anything he could muster to turn it around.

An early exit for Young, but after three rounds of qualifying and an impressive five-set victory in the first round, 2010 is already looking good.

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Rarely do Serena and Venus Williams step onto the court without an air of purpose about them.

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France’s Gael Monfils didn’t show his best form in cruising past Croatia ‘s Antonio Veic 6-4, 6-4 6-4 in the second round. Next, he faces a much taller task in American John Isner.

Putting his various ailments behind him, the 12th seed played an athletic and fairly effective game behind the baseline match in besting the Croat, cranking big forehand winners when called upon to ice the contest. “I’ve had two easy rounds, and that’s never happened to me at Grand Slam before.”

But Monfils, who is coached by Australian Roger Rasheed, wasn’t thrilled with his play.

“On a scale of 1 to 20, I would give myself a five,” he said. “Roger would probably give me a two. Against Isner, I’m planning on giving him a much better number.”

“He has a monster serve,” said Monfils. “It’s going to be really hard to return serve. If he’s serving well, it’s almost a bet as to whether I go left or right. I’m going to have to try and read his serve really well.”

James Blake, USA

I don't know what this exchange of glances on the sidelines was about, but there was definitely a fight happening on court. Blake was not able to topple Argentine Juan Martin Del Potro, who won the match 6-4, 6-7(3), 5-7, 6-3, 10-8, but he put up one hell of of a contest.

In the best match on the men’s side to date, del Potro had to come up with every shot in the book to repel the veteran American, who fought off one break point after another late in the fifth set in an attempt to pull off what could have been one of the most critical victories of his career.

“As soon as I let any ball sit up a little, he was taking it to me,” Blake said. “That’s my goal too, and I had chances at them and made some mistakes. That's the difference. You miss a couple balls and he’s moving on, and I'm not. But that’s why he won the US Open and is No. 4 in the world.”

“It’s tough to rank the [five set losses] but right now it hurts pretty bad,” said Blake. “I had plenty of messages from people back home who were up until 5 am watching me, and I don’t even want to respond to many. I just feel bad that they were up watching and are probably going to sleep a little disappointed. Luckily for me they will all be my friends tomorrow, which will help me get through after I stop beating myself up for a few hours or few days.”

That was an encouraging battle to watch, no disappointment here Blake.

Donald Young, USA

"Every match I played in the qualies, it seemed like they were rooting for the other guy, but this will just be at a totally different level, obviously," he said."I'll just have to go out there and play and imagine they're cheering my name."I've played a couple of pretty top players, but none like Lleyton here with the crowd. He's from here and they love him. (But) that's what you look for, you want to play these players."

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