Ian Kington/Getty ImagesA resurgent Maria Sharapova, the 2006 U.S. Open champ, is enjoying her highest world ranking since her return from a 2008 shoulder injury. But Serena is still the favorite.Irene who? With a hurricane bearing down on the East Coast and three days to go until the start of the 2011 U.S. Open, here are five women's tournament storylines to watch:
Who else but Serena Williams?
A little more than a year has passed since Serena Williams, then ranked No. 1 in the world and fresh off her fourth Wimbledon championship, stepped on a piece of glass at a Munich restaurant and turned women's tennis into a free-for-all. Her cut foot required two surgeries, which were followed by an emergency operation in March to remove a blood clot from her lung. Williams missed 49 weeks and three consecutive Grand Slam tournaments.
A year later, Williams seems poised to restore the natural order atop the women's game. Although the layoff (and resulting loss of rankings points) leaves her seeded No. 28 going into the U.S. Open, which begins Monday at Flushing Meadows, Williams is favored to win her 14th career Grand Slam singles title. It would be her first major victory since she won Wimbledon in 2010, just days before the initial foot injury that led to her year of health problems.
"She committed herself,'' 18-time Grand Slam singles winner and ESPN analyst Chris Evert said of Williams in a teleconference earlier this week. "She practiced. She's won two tournaments. That's unbelievable. It's incredible. Not to undermine the rest of the field, but it just shows that she's head and shoulders above anybody else, again, when she's healthy. I would take a healthy Serena as a heavy favorite in this year's U.S. Open.''
Williams lost in the fourth round of this year's Wimbledon, her second tournament back. But she's looked like the Serena of old in her subsequent tournaments, trouncing Maria Sharapova 6-1, 6-3 en route to the Bank of the West Classic title at Stanford and then winning the Rogers Cup in Toronto on Aug. 14. (She also displayed some familiar Serena-esque antics by pulling out of the tournament in Cincinnati, citing a toe injury, and then showing up at Kim Kardashian's wedding a few days later.) But her high level of play since Wimbledon led many to scoff at the U.S. Open seedings when Williams, who lifted her ranking to No. 29 from a low of 175, was announced as the 28th seed.
Said seven-time Grand Slam singles champion John McEnroe, "Me, personally, I would have put [her] in the top eight without a doubt. I don't know why they didn't do it.''
