Why did Justine Henin, Serena and Venus Williams all tremble in Oz?

i to found this years australian open very disapointing. There was 3 very bizzare quarter final matches where the top 3 lost. However, what i find fascinating is that both Venus and Serena had huge opurtunities to get back into the match and they failed to take them. Personaly i find this extraordinary since the williams sisters are the best fighters in the womens game. Serena's preperation was fantastic, aswas Venus's but they both disapointed me by only reaching the quater final. As the sisters are the best two players in the world i can only put this down to something that we will all never know about. Never fear they will be back!

i totally agree with you aasim. all 3 of the quarter-final showdowns were extremely disappointing although justine's loss to sharapova was not because of justine, but cause maria was just on fire the whole tournament. venus on the other hand had little to no excuse for losing in straight sets, she had all the chances to claim the 2nd set and push it to 3, but its clearly obvious something was wrong with her leg. serena, wat can anyone say? she just really woke up on the wrong side of the bed, even in her warm up before the quarter-final she was highly upset with herself. so, she wasn't pleased with the way she was playing that day, before the match. although i'm not a serena fan, her match was the biggest disappointment cause there's no real and clear reason she should of loss that badly to someone as defensive and worn-out as jankovic. both williams sisters should be embarrassed for losing in such fashion cause both serbians they succumbed to got beaten badly in the next match, although ivanovic got through

I was disappointed but then who am I to be? the williams may have had good reason to lose at the that stage coz we all know when Serena wants to play, she can no matter who is at the other side of the net. She's in the past pulled some extra-ordinary matches in Australia with specific reference to semi-finals of both 2003 and 2005 against Clijsters and Sharapova respectively... not mentioning off course last year's final 2007. Something was wrong!!! Most of serena's balls went out... Venus, I don't know but she doesn't normally do well in Australia except when she got to final and lost to Serena in 2003... Sharapova was worthy winner this year but I have a feeling she wouldn't have got past Serena had they met in the semi's... Serena would have played for the sake of keeping her winning record against her... And sharapova against Venus would have been an uphill struggle... Can't wait for the French, Wimby and US open to see how Sharapova fares...

Who writes this crap?

What went wrong? Nothing went wrong as such. It is a case of what went right for their opponent. Regarding henin, she is always vulnerable to Maria Sharapova when Maria is in the form of her life as she was in their Quarter Final. Another example is The US Open final 2006 when Henin was beaten in straight sets. Often, for example the Australian Open Semi final 2005 or the WTA Championships 2006, Henin's variety and tactics can get the better of Maria, however this year in Australia nothing was going to be good enough against such hard hitting. admittedly if henin had been at her best, she would have perhaps made more of a match of it, and she came close in the first set, but Maria is the epitome of the modern power game and when it is played as masterfully as that on a fsat surface, it will come out on top. As for Serena Williams, there are many articles out there debating why she has not lived up to her potential. One thing we know for sure is that she did not play well. She hit way to many unforced errors

I agree the top 3 definitely trembled at the Aussie. I will start with Venus because she may be the easiest to determine what happened. I would like to think that her leg injury prevented her from winning. I am not sure of that because she is one to make numerous unforced errors. I think that the pressure got to Justine as it does sometimes when she has to play Maria. Maria shows her fierceness against Justine but not when she plays Serena. I think she fears Serena a lot more than Justine. Justine also said that she was not feeling well but we also know that pressure can make a pipe burst and her pipes did burst. I don't think we will see her pipes bursting like that again because I think she was totally embarassed by her performance. Last but not least, Serena oh Serena. It is always difficult to try and analyze her. It depends on what's going on in her personal life which tends to always be shaky. In my opinion, she is the best female tennis player there is when she is on top of her game; but when she is o

Maria was the best player throughout the tournament. She has improved tremendously. I too think Justine ran out of steam in the QF, but Maria was just playing so incredibly well the whole time. As for Venus, I think it just wasn't her day. Serena on the other hand, she was rolling down the hill.

why do serena fans always have to say "we all know when serena wants to play she can"? thats completely untrue, she only won two tournaments last year and i'm 100% positive she would have wanted to add another grand slam to her list she was fine at the USO (just an example) and i'm sure she would have loved to beat justine in the quarters, however she didn't, not because she "didn't want to" but because she couldn't

the "top three players" (justine, serena, venus) will always try their best to win, whether it is their day or not. the day they all lost was not their day with neither player having a great excuse to lose (though they did have some reasons to why they weren't playing well). anyways congrats to maria for playing an amazing tournament, lets see if she can keep this up (not a big fan of maria btw)

I have to agree and disagree about some of the comments made in these. With the match between Justine Henin and Maria Sharapova, I was not very surprised that Sharapova won. She was playing so well throughout the tournament, especially in her dismantling of one of my favorite players-Elena Dementieva-in the fourth round. I watched most of the match between Maria and Justine, and was excited to see a very good quality women's tennis match. Justine didn't play that badly, it was Maria's amazing shot making and surprisingly quick movement that won her the match. I was a bit surprised that Justine didn't come back a little bit in the second set like she always does, but you have to give a little bit of credit to Maria, as she didn't really let her. Sharapova deserved to win the entire tournament. For the Venus Williams vs Ana Ivanovic match, i was quite surprised to see Ivanovic win. I've always been a fan of Venus and have seen her play amazing and also quite badly. However, throughout the tournament she had been playing well, and to tell you the truth, Ivanovic has never really, really impressed me like other players. Though i love her grace and power, she's too inconsistent for my liking and seemingly not as athletic as other players. I was really expecting Venus to win, but to Ana's credit, she did play better that i thought she would. Though Venus didn't play her best, i didn't think she played badly, and Ana did deserve to win that match with the way she played. But she was lucky to win the semifinal against Hantuchova, and I thought the women's final between her and Sharapova was of poor quality and didn't convince me she deserved to be in the final. Though the score wasn't that bad (7-5, 6-3), there were too many errors and short points. I miss the great rallies in big moments like Seles/Graf, Venus/Hingis, Capriati/Serena and many others had. Finally, the match between Jankovic and Serena did surprise me a little, but it didn't shock me. Though Serena was playing very well throughout the tournament, she is so unpredictable these days. She can beat a number 1 6-2, 6-2 and also lose to a player outside the top 25 in straight sets. I am a huge fan of Jankovic and her athleticism and fight is really amazing. She really just out fought Williams and was too consistent for the error-prone Williams. Jankovic gets so many balls back and can really go through the court with her backhand. To me, with Williams losing a bit of confidence, she didn't really know what to do with Jankovic: how hard to hit, where to hit, what to just keep in play. Jankovic just played tennis, but Serena didn't play her usual confident game. It was too bad that Jankovic was injured and couldn't play to her full potential against Sharapova, because that semi-final could have been a good one to see. But the match between Jankovic and Paszek was in my mind the most exciting match of the tournament-the rallies were amazing. I wish more matches were like that among the world's best!