Serena Williams returns to action for the North American hard court swing at the Bank of the West Classic in Stanford beginning on July 25th.
After a year out of the game in which she suffered a severe health scare due to a pulmonary embolism, no one knew how Serena would fare when she returned for the grass-court season. You could not write her off, this is a player who has made a mockery of pre-tournament predictions in the past by winning slams after long layoffs but she had never been out of the game for this long before. Unsurprisingly this time there was to be no fairytale. Serena struggled through to the Wimbledon fourth round before going down 6-3, 7-6 to Marion Bartoli.
It will be intriguing to see how she fares over the summer. The Stanford field is strong with four of the world's top ten competing including Maria Sharapova and defending champion Victoria Azarenka. Serena is then scheduled to compete in the mandatory WTA Premier events of Toronto and Cincinnati where the world's best including Na Li, Petra Kvitova and Kim Clijsters, will all be in action.
The North American hard courts have rarely seen the very best of Serena. She has won three US Open titles but she has never felt the need to peak for the major events in August, winning the Canadian Open just once, way back in 2001 and never winning in Cincinnati.
