Month of December , 2008

A former US university gridiron player has been charged with threatening Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova, as well as his former coach.
 
Leonard Taylor, a defensive back for the University of Wisconsin from 1995-98, was arrested on Friday and faces charges of stalking and telephone harassment over calls he made to Barry Alvarez, his former head coach and now the University of Wisconsin athletic director.
 

Gold Coast runner-up Victoria Azarenka's entry has completed a Brisbane International women's field boasting 10 of the world's top 30 women.

Azarenka, ranked No.15, was the last piece in the jigsaw of a strong women's field headed by world No.5 Ana Ivanovic for the tournament which will open the Queensland Tennis Centre from January 4-11.

World number three Novak Djokovic will warm up for his Australian Open defence at the inaugural Brisbane International in January, organisers said on Tuesday.
 
Djokovic tops a star-studded line-up for the January 4-11 tournament, which replaces the women's Gold Coast event and the men's Adelaide International.
 

Towering Croat Ivo Karlovic earned the king of aces title for the second straight season, leading the ATP circuit with 961 aces in 2008.

The 6'10" Karlovic averaged 17.8 aces through 54 matches, achieving his highest total for the season with 42 in his second round win against Frenchman Florent Serra at the US Open. In a best-of-three-sets match, Karlovic fired 35 aces to Rafael Nadal's six in the Queen's Club quarterfinals but still came up on the losing end in a third-set tie-break.

Americans Pete Sampras and James Blake will go head-to-head for the first time when they play at the "Duel Under the Oaks II" charity exhibition at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge on Sunday, December 14. Proceeds from the event will benefit non-profit organizations aiding those impacted by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike.

There has been a marked rise in the amount and intensity of off-court training among tennis players over the last few decades, and one place to clearly see the increase in physicality of the sport is in serve speed. The six fastest servers of all time have all emerged over the last three years; have a look at that list now, as well as leaders from the 2008 Sony Ericsson WTA Tour season.
 

Pete Sampras has backed Roger Federer to break his record number of grand slam wins in the "next couple of years" and hopes to be there when it happens.

Federer, 27, has accrued 13 major titles so far, one short of the 14 won by Sampras, who is in London this week playing at the Tour of Champions' BlackRock Masters.

It’s been a year of ups and downs for 21-year-old Moscow native Anna Chakvetadze. Although she has slipped slightly in the rankings,  this year she won her 7th career title, at the Open Gaz de France in Paris.
 

Ana Ivanovic buys a house in Mallorca for 4,5 million Euros
 

The sudden retirement of incumbent No. 1 Justine Henin left the WTA Tour in anarchy.
 
If you've ever played that game where you build a tower of wooden blocks, then withdraw them one at a time while trying to prevent the tower from toppling, you'll understand what Justine Henin's abrupt retirement in May did to the hierarchy of the women's game. It removed a structural beam, and the resulting pile was kind of a mess. If you like parity, variety and surprises, 2008 was your year. We review some of the highlights and head-scratchers below.
 

I'm afraid 2008 will quickly be forgotten in terms of the women's game.
 
Justine Henin's standards over the previous 12 months had set the bar high but once she made the shock decision to quit in May, no-one was able to take over the baton with a series of players treating the number-one ranking like a hot potato.
 
Searching through the memory banks for a cracking top-level match is difficult and reflects that power vacuum at the top.
 

Three-time Grand Slam champion Lindsay Davenport has been dropping hints that her tennis career could finally be over, with motherhood fast becoming a full-time occupation.
 
The 32-year-old has vowed to decide in the next few days whether she will prepare for the Australian Open, which begins January 19 in Melbourne.
 
"I'll have to sit down more seriously and look at what I want to do in the future," admitted the Californian, whose 18-month-old son Jagger is taking up more and more of her time.
 

They may only be playing on the junior tour but the British girls are gaining notable success. Fantastic!
 

It's been another successful week for Britain's rising teenage stars on the women’s tennis circuit. Okay, we are only talking junior success but many of the world’s top players have used this circuit during their early years to gain experience and develop a winning mentality.
 

The 15-year-old tennis starlet is making steady progress up the WTA rankings.
 
Cristiano Ronaldo may bed the pin-up boy of Portuguese sport right now, but there's a young girl on the horizon who will be challenging soon as the favourite of the nation. She's a tennis player - and she's only 15.

Just under 12 months ago at the 2008 Australian Open we were lucky enough to sit down with two genuine international hot prospects – Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki and young Frenchwoman Alize Cornet.
 
Last January they were both able to look back on impressive junior careers, but still had a lot of work to do to turn those results into wins on the senior tour. A year later, though, and after taking the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour by storm, the young Euro stars are on the brink of the women’s top 10.
 

Pete Sampras believes it could be as many as 40 years before the United States has players dominating the men’s world tennis rankings again.

Owner of a record 14 Grand Slam titles, Sampras led the American supremacy in the 1990s, holding the year-end No. 1 for a record six years from 1993 to 1998, and was closely followed along with countrymen Andre Agassi, Jim Courier and Michael Chang.

American Mardy Fish will play against World No. 4 Andy Murray in an exhibition match at Mardy's Tennis and Jake's Music Fest, an annual event that benefits the Mardy Fish Foundation, on December 13 in Vero Beach, Florida.

Mardy’s Tennis & Jake’s Music Fest is a two-day event consisting of a combination of tennis, music, golf and a dinner party, at venues around Vero Beach. In addition to the tennis exhibition, tickets are available to attend or participate in other parts of the action-packed weekend.

Pete Sampras believes Andy Murray has what it takes to win a grand slam singles title and reckons he is "only one notch below" world top two Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.

Murray, 21, enjoyed a prolific season, reaching number four in the world and beating Nadal en route to the US Open final in September, only to lose out to Federer.

That followed a run to the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, which included a thrilling five-set defeat of Richard Gasquet, and a Murray major win is widely considered to be only a matter of time.

 Roger Federer will play only two clay-court tournaments before the 2009 French Open, the only Grand Slam tournament he has never won.

Federer will head to Paris on May 24 after playing Masters series events in Rome and Madrid on his least favorite surface, according to a schedule published on his Web site.

Federer played four clay-court events ahead of the 2008 French Open -- Estoril, Portugal; Monte Carlo; Rome; and Hamburg, Germany. He lost to Rafael Nadal in the French Open final.

Jelena Jankovic wasn't the only twenty-something in the Top 20 to finish 2008 with a career-high ranking. Five of her counterparts applied newfound maturity, technical improvements, good health and fitness and a dash of luck to post their best seasons. Whether they are aptly described as born-again players or late bloomers, these turnaround queens serve as a reminder that a tennis career can assume a fresh trajectory even after the term 'teen phenom' is out of date.
 
Dinara Safina: Up from No.15 to No.3 in 2008