Serena Williams heads to the Miami Masters this week, returning to the WTA Tour for the first time in two months as she looks to win a sixth Sony Ericsson Open title. Serena has only played two tournaments in 2012 (including suffering a surprise fourth round defeat at the Australian Open to Ekaterina Makarova), but she is still second favourite with bookmakers to win in Miami yet again. Williams has made the final of the Miami Masters no fewer than seven times in her career, winning five of those finals.
The American has a decent draw this week which will give her time to shake off rust and work her way into the competition ahead of a potential US Open final rematch against Samantha Stosur in the fourth round. Serena will be pretty pumped up for that possible clash and given that Stosur has not been in good form this year, she’ll have a great chance of advancing to the quarter-finals, where from that stage onwards it’s anyone’s game. Serena is 9/4 with bookmakers bet365 to reach the final, and she’s in the right half of the draw to do that. She could face Maria Sharapova in the semi-finals, but she would be relatively confident given that she leads on the head-to-head, plus Sharapova hardly relishes those encounters and is prone to disintegrating against players willing to take on her second serve.
China’s Zhang puts
herself in Serena’s path: Serena Williams, a 13-time Grand Slam champion who has not played a WTA event since a fourth-round Australian Open loss, will face China’s Zhang Shuai in her first match at the WTA Miami hardcourt event. Five-time Miami winner Williams, the 10th seed on the women’s side of the $9.6 million event played in conjunction with an ATP tournament, learned her opponent on Tuesday after the start of play in the two-week event. Zhang rallied to eliminate Britain’s Elena Baltacha 6-7 (5/7), 6-3, 6-2 in an opening-round match to book a date with former World No. 1 Williams, who has been sidelined with a sprained ankle.
