Over the weekend, Venus Williams lost to Maria Sharapova in straights sets in an exhibition match played in Thailand. At the beginning of each tennis season, we wonder which Venus will appear at the Australian Open. The Venus we see at Wimbledon each summer? Or the Venus we typically see the other 9 or 10 months of the tennis year.
Whatever we wish for, the numbers from the last decade don't offer much hope that the elder Williams sister will be a legitimate contender in Oz. Here's what they tell us:
For all of the talk of injuries and outside interests, Venus Williams missed just 4 of the 40 grand slam events played from 2000 - 2009. If we remove the 10 Wimbledons from those 36 slams in which she competed, we are left with the disappointing and revealing stat that Venus reached the semifinals or better in just 7 of those 26 events! With only one of the semifinals coming in the second half of the decade (2007 US Open)!
We seem to enter each grand slam event (outside the French) with commentators billing "The Williams Sisters" as the ones to beat and expected to be competing in the later rounds. Perhaps it is out of respect for Venus that the commentators continue to call her a contender on par with Serena, but the statistics have not born out Venus as a true threat outside Wimbledon in quite some time.
