Tennis News

The cream of Israeli tennis is headed Down Under in the lead-up to this month’s Australian Open in Melbourne.

Players are set to contest several of the warm-up tournaments.

Shahar Peer, Dudi Sela, Andy Ram and Yoni Erlich also look set to head back to the Leon Haskin Tennis Centre, which was named an official training venue for the 2007 Open. 

Jelena Jankovic believes she is worthy of her place as the world's best player despite not having won a grand slam.

The 23-year-old Serbian finished 2008 as world number one thanks to an impressively consistent season that saw her emerge victorious in 65 of her 84 matches and included a maiden grand slam final at the US Open and last-four appearances at the Australian and French Opens, alongside four WTA titles.

Marina Erakovic's world ranking is on the line in her first round match at the ASB Classic in Auckland today.

Erakovic, the world No 66, will plummet into the 80s if she fails to get past her Spanish opponent, Nuria Llagostera Vives ranked just two spots below at No 68, when they meet in the third scheduled match on centre court.

Last year, in her dream semifinal run, Erakovic won 100 WTA ranking points.

 Fourth-seeded Andy Roddick moved into the second round of the Qatar Open with a 6-1, 6-3 victory over Ivan Navarro of Spain on Monday.

Roger Federer has been experimenting with new tactics that he hopes will enable him to fulfil his 2009 goals of regaining the world number one ranking and equalling Pete Sampras's record of 14 grand slam titles.

The Swiss was ousted from the top of the rankings by Rafael Nadal last August and his aura of invincibility was broken by defeat in the Wimbledon final before he silenced his doubters with victory in the U.S. Open -- his 13th grand slam crown.

Indian tennis star Sania Mirza said Monday she had recovered from a "career-threatening" injury with help from top cricketer Yuvraj Singh.

A beaming Mirza was delighted to be back on court after the painful wrist problem which forced her out of the Beijing Olympics in tears and left her unable even to lift a fork to eat.

Mirza is taking part in the World Team Challenge exhibition event here following treatment recommended by Singh, her friend and an Indian Test batsman.

Cagey veteran Dominik Hrbaty conjured an upset 3-0 win for the Slovak Republic over defending champions the United States in the mixed teams Hopman Cup here Monday.

The day after his 31st birthday, Hrbaty belied his lowly ranking to stun American James Blake, snatching an enthralling singles encounter in three sets to secure the Group A tie for the Slovaks against the top seeds.

In Belgrade, she is bigger than Bond. When a feature-length documentary about Jelena Jankovic was released at cinemas, giving an insight into what her life is like beyond the tramlines, it bumped the Quantum of Solace into second place in the Serbian box office.

Maybe that was because Jankovic's action scenes were not partly computer-generated, and that the tennis plot was a little less clunky than James Bond's, or simply that Serbia preferred their own world No 1 to 007.

The first Women's Tennis Association rankings of 2009 showed on Monday an unchanged top 10 still dominated by Russian players.

Serbia's Jelena Jankovic tops the weekly list, followed by Serena Williams of the United States, but then Russian women take six of the next nine slots. Dinara Safina is third and Elena Dementieva fourth, followed by Vera Zvonareva in seventh, Svetlana Kuznetsova eighth and Maria Sharapova ninth.

Nadia Petrova is still knocking on the door of the top 10 in eleventh spot.

Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis's comeback stalled in the first round of the Brisbane International as he bowed out to Finland's Jarkko Nieminen.