Serena Williams pulls out of Hopman Cup

I'm actually looking forward to this tournament because of the great line up of players.

It's pretty sad that Serena Williams will not be teaming up with James Blake to play against the brother and sister team Marat Safin and Dinara Safina.

Williams announced that she has to withdraw from next month's Hopman Cup mixed teams event after suffering from a hamstring injury.

The US Open winner injured her hamstring in the year-ending WTA Championships and has not been able to recover in time to prepare for the Perth tournament, although she still intends to play the Australian Open later in January.

World No.10 Blake will now be partnered by Meghann Shaughnessy.

When Blake was in Malaysia last month, I had the opportunity to ask him a question regarding the Hopman Cup.



Teams who will be playing are: US (Meghann Shaughnessy/James Blake x1), Russia (Marat Safin/Dinara Safina x2), France (Alize Cornet/Gilles Simon x3), Australia (Casey Dellacqua/Lleyton Hewitt x4), Italy (Simone Bolelli/Flavia Pennetta x5), Germany (Sabine Lisicki/Nicolas Kiefer x6), Slovak Republic (Dominika Cibulkova/Dominik Hrbaty x7), Taiwan (Su-Wei Hsieh/Lu Yen-Hsun x8).

(Via AFP)