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The release was bittersweet and added quite an exclamation point to her efforts after enduring injuries, on and off, the last few years. The months after winning the Australian Open title in 2005, Serena sustained a leg injury while playing in a tournament on Amelia Island. In retrospect, Serena has since admitted that she should have had arthroscopic surgery on that knee and should have skipped Wimbledon altogether. Instead, she played, and her bum knee contributed to an early exit to an unseeded player. Still other problems lingered. A few months prior to the 2007 Australian Open, Serena, her sister, Venus and their father, Richard, were busy fighting a breach-of-contract law suit, which was filed by a match promoter accusing them of reneging on a deal. That cut into her practice time and became yet another diversion. And then there was the question that even Serena must have asked herself again and again. How badly do I want this? Tennis critics did not think she wanted it badly enough at all. Many spoke about her weight gain. Skeptics surfaced everywhere wondering if Serena were training hard enough, if she would ever be near the player she was in her early twenties. And quite frankly, this criticism motivated her more than anything. Serena wrote on her web site blog that "more than winning what I liked the most in the Australian Open was proving people wrong. Down to the last round, the last match, I was still fighting critics. Everyone thought I was going to lose because I was playing the number one seed, because to their standards, I'm not fit…" She went on to make a very interesting point for young girls who may be influenced by skinny models and actresses. "I don't look like Mary Kate Olsen or Nicole Richie," Serena continued. ‘I'm all black, and I'm all woman, baby. I have hips, curves, butt and boobs…I will never be a size 2. I will always be bigger. And there are tons of other women and people out there that share my same body type. I'm a body-liscious babe," she writes. "My waist is 29 inches; I can't have a smaller waist unless I decide to starve myself, and if my fans out there want me to win more slams, I'm not going to be able to do that.:)." If you are keeping score at home between Serena and her critics: it's Advantage Serena. She not only proved the critics wrong, she made them look silly. Her opponents are too smart to know that you can never underestimate Serena on the court. If you hit the ball as hard as she does and serve that powerfully – when she is consistent – she will beat anyone. Even a Serena who is not 100 percent fit and who can not put in the usual amount of training time, for whatever reason, is still a lot stronger than most of the top female players in the world. Combine that power with her hunger again, and that she is happiest when she wins tennis matches, and Serena can continue to prove that when her heart is in the game, she has what it takes to become the greatest female tennis player ever. Ann Liguori earned 16 Varsity Sports letters in high school. She played on the boy's tennis team because there was no girl's team at the time. As a pioneer herself in the sports broadcasting industry, Ann has played ball with the boys her entire career and adores playing golf with them. You can contact her at
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