Mid Week News and Notes.

With no tournaments being played this week, things are a little slow in the world of tennis.  But I did find a couple of things worth noting:

Updating the suspensions of Yanina Wickmayer and Xavier Malisse:  Both players have made official appeals to the Court of Arbitration of Sport to overturn their 1 year bans for missing drug tests.... The Ruling will come within 4 months.

Before the appeals became official Xavier Malisse was saying he might not be able to afford to appeal.  Citing not enough money to go through the process...Well it looks like he scraped together enough pennies to be able to appeal.  He has also gone on record as to saying that if he loses the appeal he will retire.  To be honest I didn't know he even was around anymore.  He didn't win more than a handful of  matches all year long.  Hell win or lose, he should just pack it in and call it a day.

Here is the Official Rule that they broke:  Under the World Anti-Doping Agency's rules, elite athletes must be available for out-of-competition testing for  one hour a day, 365 days a year.  They must give 3 months notice of where they will be so they can be tested.

The United States Tennis Association recently conducted a survey recently and more Americans are playing tennis.

The results of the survey showed that 30.1 million Americans played tennis this year.  Up 12% from last year and 25% from 6 years ago.  Hispanics showed the biggest increase at 32%.  African-Americans were 2nd with a 19% increase.  There was 7.1 million newcomers to the game, a 19.5% increase.

You can thank the last 2 Wimbledon finals.  The epic Nadal-Federer final in 2008 which in many people's oppinions is the "greatest match of all-time".  Or the Roddick-Federer final of this season that saw Federer winning 16-14 in the 5th set.

It seems that possible the Williams sisters are having a small "Tiger Woods" affect on the game of tennis.  Atleast that is how I see it with the higher number of blacks taking up tennis.  Looks like the sport is growing in America........temporarily.  Just like soccer was booming after the 94 world cup held here in the U.S.  This growth will be short lived.  There are no American stars beyond the Williams sisters and Andy Roddick.  All three of them are getting older and probably nearing the end of their primes if not have past their primes.  Venus definetly looks past hers. This boom of tennis in America will soon fade, just like the hopes of any American male winning a Grand Slam in the near future.