American teen, Melanie Oudin, shocked former No. 1 Jelena Jankovic by eliminating her 6-7 (8), 7-5, 6-2 to pull off what might be the biggest upset at the 2009 Wimbledon championships so far.  I’m not sure if the 82F/28C degree heat played a factor, though, since the pair took a 12 minute break after Jankovic called for a medical timeout.  The sixth seeded Serbian star had to lay on the court for a little while with a blood pressure cuff on her arm.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, she called another timeout later for her left foot.  Basically, it was a nightmare for Jankovic but a dream come true for Oudin who had never one a Grand Slam match.

image: Zuma Press

Venus Williams beat her opponent, Carla Suarez Navarro 6-0, 6-4.  The straight-set victory has brought her a little closer to winning her third consecutive Wimbledon title.  Williams played like she was seeking to avenge herself after losing to Suarez in the second round at this year’s Australian Open.  Williams will next battle 13th-seeded Serb Ana Ivanovic in a fourth-round match.

Here’s a rundown of the other women’s results from Wimbledon:

• Fifth-seeded Svetlana Kuznetsova was knocked out by unseeded German Sabine Lisicki 6-2, 7-5.
• Ninth-seeded Dane Caroline Wozniacki reached the fourth round for the first time by beating No. 20 Anabel Medina Garrigues of Spain.
• Former Wimbledon champion Amelie Mauresmo beat 15th-seeded Italian Flavia Pennetta 7-5, 6-3.

On Tuesday (May 12) No. 3 Serena Williams was defeated by Russian Alisa Kleybanova 6-3, 3-6, 7-5. The match took 2 hours and 12 minutes. Serena’s sister Venus was watching from the sideline after stopping her match on Monday due to a knee injury. This was not a good tournament for the Williams sisters.

Serena was really struggling through this match and Kleybanova lead early in the match.

“I felt like she won by just being aggressive from both sides (of the court),” Williams said. “Against me she had to go for everything and make everything. All her balls landed in today.”

What did Serena have to offer her fans? “See you next year” was all she could say.

In other women’s tennis news, Jelena Jankovic defeated Slovakian Daniela Hantuchova 7-5, 6-2.

Source: Miami Herald

Image Credit: Bauer Griffin

*Cue the drum roll, jugglers, and acrobats*

After a week of vacation-y bliss, yours truly is back at the helm of Gossip On Sports. We’re defrosting our icy heart just long enough to thank Channel Editor Kori Ellis of The Fantasy Kickoff for filling in for us while we were away.

We apologize for not telling you about the vacay in advance, but we didn’t want autograph hounds and paparazzi to follow us all over Arizona. (It’s OK to laugh. That’s a joke. Truth is, we’re not even sure anyone noticed we were gone).

Anyhow, in the spirit of back-to-school “What I Did This Summer” essays and to prove that this lil’ ol’ blog was never far removed from this bloggerette’s mind, here are a few random sports-related observations from the vacation:

• We took an awesome, everyone-fit-enough-should-do-it 12-mile, 7-hour mule ride into the Grand Canyon. Despite our fatigue as we neared the end, we gave a hearty shout to the hiker chick with a Boston Red Sox cap.
• The Bee bought an Arizona Diamondbacks t-shirt in lieu of the fact that we didn’t *actually* see a snake.
• Happily, we had a lovely, spacious room at the Enchantment Resort. This was important after the Federer-Djokovic semifinal of the U.S. Open, because we were able to jump around like a pre-teen at a Miley Cyrus concert without getting hurt or knocking over furniture.
• A hostess at said resort had a name tag indicating Cooperstown, NY as her hometown, so we told her how much we’d enjoyed a trip there to the Baseball Hall of Fame. That was OK. Then we found out she was a Yankees fan. That’s when The Bee’s wife (that would be me) said, “End of discussion, next subject!” as a joke. But it wasn’t really a joke. We only pretended it was.
• Sadly, yesterday (Sunday) was our travel day, which interfered with our viewing pleasure of the Pats-Chiefs game (though being spared QB Tom Brady’s season-ending injury is a good thing), the Nadal-Murray semifinal of the U.S. Open, and the Williams-Jankovic women’s final. The upside? We get to watch the Federer-Murray final. Unless Fed starts to lose, in which case we’ll just play the Wii.

          (ETA: Roger Federer won! And we only knocked over two things off the end table in the course of our celebratory cartwheels).

It’s good to be back! All that pent-up snark was beginning to take it’s toll on us, you know.