Fellow tour players did not have enough time to see how Kim Clijsters would return to the tour late last season. After three summer tune-ups, the 36 time tour winner and two-time Grand Slam Champion stole the show in New York at the U.S Open. A sentimental favorite, Clijsters had taken more than two years off to be with her newborn child. With her September victory, she became the first mother, since Yvonne Goolagang (1980) to win a major title.

In Melbourne, one of the most dominant signs read Just In Time, a tribute to Justine Henin’s return to the tour. The popular 5’ 5 1/2” Belgian dynamo returned to the tour after a nearly an 18 month leave of absence and immediately stormed to the forefront. In her very first event, the unseeded Henin put away Nadia Petrova, the two seed, in the first round at Brisbane and then marched to the finals. She succumbed to Kim Clijsters, another Belgian comeback player, in the finals but clearly staked her claim to the elite level of women’s tennis.

Melanie Oudin is up to her old tricks. The spunky American mounted an unlikely rally and surged past veteran Agnes Szavay in the quarterfinals of the $700,000 Open GDF Suez in Paris on Friday. An enthusiastic crowd wildly encouraged the underdog who at one point trailed 2-6, 1-3 against the savvy and seemingly [...]

Nadia Petrova is many things to many people.  She is one of those players on the tour that other players dread to see across the net.  Not that she isn’t popular.  She is.  But, Nadia can present a formidable presence across the net.
At 5’10” and 143 pounds and with ten years [...]