Would WTA take Serena Williams seriously?

"It doesn't matter if you're injured, dead or alive, if you don't play they will fine you heavily. So I have to play whether I am injured or not. That's just how it is so I have no choice."

~ Serena Williams

The world no. 2 blasted the WTA Tour over its policy for dealing with players who pull out of tournaments through injury.

Serena said the WTA Tour’s fines for missing tournaments was behind her decision to play in the small Marbella tournament right after limping through the final at the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami.

(Image via sports.sina.com.cn)

Weekend winners everywhere

Rome - World no.1 Dinara Safina won her first title of the year Saturday by defeating fellow Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-3, 6-2 in the final of the Italian Open.

Estoril - Spain’s Albert Montanes battled past American James Blake 5-7, 7-6, 6-0 to win the Estoril Open on Sunday.

Meanwhile, in the women's singles, Yanina Wickmayer claimed her first career title with a straight-sets victory over Ekaterina Makarova 7-5, 6-2 to pick up her maiden WTA Tour crown in Portugal.

Munich - Tomas Berdych rallied from four points down in the decisive tiebreaker to beat Mikhail Youzhny 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 (5) in the final of the BMW Open Sunday for his first title of the year.

Belgrade - Top-seeded Novak Djokovic beat lucky loser Lukasz Kubot of Poland 6-3, 7-6 (0) in the Serbia Open final to win the first ATP Tour tournament held in his home country.

(Images via Yahoo! Sports, Djokovic's pic by Andrej Isakovic/AFP/Getty Images)

Rendy Lu Yen-Hsun wins Israel Open title

After flirting briefly with the red clay in Barcelona recently, Asia's no.1 player Rendy Lu Yen-hsun was back on hard court and the effort paid off.

Rendy won the men's singles title at the Israel Open on Saturday after his opponent pulled out with an injury.

Rendy was leading Benjamin Becker 6-3, 3-1 when Becker decided to retire due to his ailing right shoulder.

The Taiwanese swept through five matches at the second-tier tournament without losing a single set despite entering the competition with a sore back and struggling with his first serve.

For winning the title, Rendy earned almost US$15,000 as well as keeping his rank in the top 70 players in the world.

He is scheduled to play next in a Turkish tournament, Izmir Cup, in the coming week where he is the top seed.

Updates: Here are more photos of Rendy in Israel!

Thanks to Esther for the photo!

(Via rti.org.tw; Image via Israel Open)

Moneymaker Kei Nishikori to be featured in ESPN the Magazine

Kei Nishikori is currently ranked at no. 118 in the world and yet his endorsement deals are said to have approached the level of top 10 players like Andy Roddick and the Williams sisters.

How does he do that?

You can read all about it on the ESPN website or download the article here.

The story written by Lindsay Berra will appear in the May 18 issue of ESPN the Magazine.

Thanks to Olivier of IMG for this piece of article.