Venus Williams is dropping in the rankings and does not appear to be a threat heading into the WTA Sony Ericsson Championships.

Venus Williams has a lot of pride as an athlete.  That being the case, with her ranking starting to slide (it's down to 7th on tour) you have to wonder how long she will hang around the WTA tour.  While being ranked in the top 10 is still incredible, when you are proud, when you've been ranked number 1 for part of your career, and when you have taken down numerous Grand Slam titles sometimes only being at the top, or very close to the top, will do.

We'll see what Venus Williams wants in the future.

Heading into Doha however, Venus Williams has come in at ridiculously short odds with Betfair where she is priced at +370 (37/10), a reflection of the fact that she is the defending champ. 

Keep in mind that Venus Williams has been losing to a lot of non-Doha calibre competition recently.  Venus lost in Beijing AND Tokyo to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, a player barely in the top 40.  While Williams' loss to Kim Clijsters at the US Open isn't so bad because of who Clijsters is, prior to that Venus fell to 64th ranked Kateryna Bondarenko back in Toronto.

Flavia Pennetta and Marion Bartoli are both solid players on tour but they won't be at the WTA Sony Ericsson Championships because they aren't THAT good.  However, both of them handed Venus losses during the hard court season this past summer.

More examples of Venus' declining game could be provided from the last year but the point by now should be clear: at +370 she can't be bet on to win in Doha.  Truthfully those might not even be great odds for her to simply make the final and if you want to get really serious, they might not be that great for her to win her match against her sister Serena.  Venus' game has just declined and she is outmatched by younger players.

Venus has pride though and you can hear it in every smash she's delivered at Wimbledon over the years.  Pride often leads to retirement in tennis though as a lot of self-respecting athletes just can't take losing to players that aren't that good, but are just younger.  That doesn't mean Venus is retiring soon but you have to wonder if the day is coming.  It's not like tennis is the only career Venus has been interested in over the years: she's a businessperson and she has investments.

As soon as Venus suffers an early round exit at Wimbledon and loses a windfall of tour points, she'll start fading.  When she starts fading then she'll stop being a high seed in the non-Grand Slam tour events and she'll spiral downwards from there like nearly all stars that have come before her have.  It's inevitable because it's a fact of life: the athleticism deteriorates before the heart does.

Venus Williams has opened at +800 (8/1) with bet365 for those of you who see things differently but even at that price she's not worth the risk.

Go to bet365 to bet on WTA tennis.