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Serena Williams Tennis

January 4, 2012 by · Comments Off on Serena Williams Tennis 

Serena Williams TennisSerena Williams Tennis, Serena Williams is in doubt for the Australian Open after injuring her left ankle in only her second singles match since September. The United States’ Serena Williams grimaces in pain while receiving treatment after injuring her left ankle during her match against Bojana Jovanovski. Williams won the match but it is not known if she will be able to continue on in the tournament.

The United States’ Serena Williams grimaces in pain while receiving treatment after injuring her left ankle during her match against Bojana Jovanovski. Williams won the match but it is not known if she will be able to continue on in the tournament.

Williams, in her first trip Down Under since winning the 2010 Australian title and playing a tournament for the first time since losing the U.S. Open final, was serving for the match with a 6-2, 5-3 lead against Serbia’s Bojana Jovanovski on Wednesday when she was wrong-footed and twisted her ankle, crashing heavily to the court.

The 13-time Grand Slam winner needed treatment as she lay near the baseline for several minutes. She was helped to a courtside chair and had the ankle re-taped before resuming the second-round match and losing the next point to surrender a service break to Jovanovski.

Williams limped through the next game, wincing in pain after at least two points, before securing a 6-2, 6-4 win to advance to the Brisbane International quarterfinals. The 30-year-old Williams said she’d need medical scans Wednesday night to determine the extent of the problem but was “just thinking positive.”

“I’m anticipating it’ll be OK,” she said. “My initial thoughts, I’m always thinking I can play on, but at the same time I don’t want to stress it out right now.

“I’m just going to play it by ear and see how I feel when I wake up in the morning.”

She was due to meet Slovakia’s Daniela Hantuchova in a quarterfinal on Thursday.

The Australian Open starts Jan. 16 in Melbourne. Williams, a five-time winner at Melbourne Park, missed the 2011 Australian Open while she was recovering from two operations on her foot and blood clots in her lungs which kept her sidelined for about a year after Wimbledon 2010.

She won two tournaments heading into the U.S. Open but, after losing the final to Australia’s Sam Stosur, she didn’t play another tournament last year due to injuries.

Williams said her first thought when she sprawled to the court near the baseline on Wednesday was “Not again.”

“That’s what I felt,” she said. “I was like, ‘No way!'”

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