But Williams has insisted that the injury is minor and that she will be ready to defend her title at Melbourne Park next week. Serena Williams has been injured, has hardly played since the U.S. Open and had to withdraw from her only tune-up event ahead of the Australian Open. It’s challenging enough to meet the game’s most famous fighter, and it could be doubly so with so much sentiment in Hewitt’s favour in his home major.
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Johannesburg, Jan.14: World number ones Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams have been announced as top seeds for first major of the season, Australian Open, which starts from Monday. Reminiscent of Michael Jordan creating his own challenges and conjuring competitive fury toward the end of his career with the Chicago Bulls, Williams seemed bored at times early in matches a year ago, only to stage furious comebacks in 18 of those 19 three-set matches before her three-set loss to Vinci.
The former world number one pulled out of last week’s Brisbane International and that led to fears she could miss the opening Grand Slam of 2016.
“My body is feeling great now”, she said this week.
The aggressive, power-hitting Muguruza heads the swag of young pretenders looking to finally usurp Williams, with second seed Simona Halep and fourth seed Agnieszka Radwanska also in contention.
“I think she’s a player we should be talking about and focusing on right now”, Evert said. “That’s why [last] year was, for me, very impressive, because she had to fight through so many problems to win three of four [Grand Slam titles]”.
“When I say ideal, it’s not one thing in particular”.
Apart from Kriek, South Africa’s most notable men’s singles performers in the Australian Open in the open era are Kevin Curren, who reached the final in 1984 before going down in four tough sets to Sweden’s multi-grand slam champion, Mats Wilander, and Wayne Ferreira, who made it through to the semi-finals in 1992 and 2003. “I always thought she has a champions’ mentality”.
No 2-ranked Andy Murray will open again Alexander Zverev of Germany, and on the same half of the draw, No. 5 Rafael Nadal opens again fellow Spaniard and 2009 Australian Open semifinalist Fernando Verdasco.
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Federer, who lost five finals to Djokovic in 2015, said the Qatar Open final score emphasized the difference between the No. 1-ranked player and the rest. And other good news for local supporters this Australian Open is that three of them are seeded – Tomic at No.16, Kyrgios at No. 29 and Sam Stosur leading the women at No.25. “Between two top guys… you rarely see blowouts”, Federer said.
