MAZEL TOV!: Regarding the mysterious foot injury Serena Williams says she suffered when she stepped on broken glass in a Munich restaurant, Art Spander asserted, “Exactly why anyone steps on a glass, other than a groom at a Jewish wedding ceremony, is beyond most of us.” Of course, Williams isn’t the only player to have a run-in with glass: Sam Querrey sat on a glass table that collapsed, impaling his arm and nearly ending his career. In the midst of a nightmare, Canadian Peter Polansky ran through a plate glass window and landed in a courtyard three stories below. And David Wheaton accidentally put his hand through a dorm window while on Rollerblades at Stanford. (We’d be remiss not to mention another tennis-glass connection: Virginia Glass, the tennis pioneer and the first woman to head the American Tennis Association — the oldest nationwide African-American sports organization in America.)
WHEN WE WERE NO. 1: Neither Serena nor Venus are anywhere in sight, but that doesn’t mean the Williams-less Bank of the West Classic has suffered from a lack of top players. In fact, at one point, there were four former No. 1s on the Stanford campus — Maria Sharapova, Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Dinara Safina.
THE CURSE OF THE WIMBLEDON SEMIS?: Which former Wimbledon semifinalist had a more lackluster follow-up — Anna Kournikova, Alexandra Stevenson, Jelena Dokic, Mirjana Lucic, Meredith McGrath or Yvonne Vermaak?
COMEBACK KID: She squandered three set points in the first set, trailed 5-1 while facing match point in the second, and was down 3-1 in the third, but American Melanie Oudin rallied to take down Canadian Aleksandra Wozniak 6-7(6), 7-5, 6-3 in the opening round at the Bank of the West Classic.
THE NUMBERS
2-3: Bulgarian Tsvetana Pironkova‘s record (including losses Vera Zvonareva, Jill Craybas and Anastasia Rodionova) since upending Venus Williams in the Wimbledon quarters.
QUOTEBOOK
“If you really think about it, it’s so dumb — you have a grip in your hand, strings in the racket, there’s a yellow fuzzy ball and you’re hitting it and you’ve been doing it since you were four years old — it’s ridiculous, it’s really dumb, but it’s what we do.” — Maria Sharapova
“I’m getting pretty stale about the whole situation.” — John Isner on the overwhelming response to his epic five-set/11-hour win over Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon
