Samantha Stosur

Samantha Stosur is a former number 1 ranked player in doubles with her partner Lisa Raymond. She is born in March 30, 1984 in Australia. She first played professional tennis on the ITF circuit in 1999. Then in the year 200 she debuted on the WTA tours via the Australian Open. 2001 was a good year for her by winning 4 straight titles in the ITF tour.

She won her first WTA singles match in 2003 by reaching the third round of the Australian Open where she was ousted by Daniela Hantuchova. In 2004 she made it to the semifinal round of the Gold Coast Event. Then she got to the second round in the WTA tournament in Hobart and the 2004 Australian Open. She also qualified for various WTA events in Birmingham, Indian Wells, Acapulco and Vienna. She represented her country in the Athens Olympics but was defeated in the first round.

In 2007 Samantha Stosur, together with her doubles partner Lisa Raymond, successfully defended their doubles title in Indian Wells, Tokyo and Miami. They also won the doubles title in the German Open. In singles matches, she reached three quarterfinals of tournaments in Tokyo, Memphis and Gold Coast. In the Rome Masters, she defeated the number one seed Amelie Mauresmo in the second round but lost to Patty Schnyder in the next round. After the French Open, she unluckily contracted Lyme disease, a form of viral meningitis, through a tick bite. She had to withdraw from a lot of US hard court tournaments. She has lost in the first round of the US Open to a virtually unknown Alize Cornet.

In 2008, she was scheduled to have her comeback at the Gold Coast event but later announced that she still needs more time to fully recover from her sickness. She then stated that she will be returning to active competition at Indian Wells, only to be sidelined by a shoulder injury sustained during training. She enjoys a protected ranking of 46 in which she could use for 8 events over a period of 6 months.

She competed in two ITF events. Then in May, she competed in the Rome Masters where she was defeated by Venus Williams in the second round. She also reached the second round of the French Open where she was beaten by Petra Kvitova. She competed in Birmingham and lost to the eventual winner Kateryna Bondarenko in the second round. She reached the semifinal round of the International Women’s Open but lost to Nadia Petrova in straight sets.
Although she only reached the second round in singles action in Wimbledon, she reached the finals in both the Women’s and Mixed Doubles events. With her doubles partner Lisa Raymond, they lost to the Williams sisters in the Women’s Doubles Finals. In the Mixed doubles, she partnered with Bob Bryan to win the title. She entered in the Stanford event and bowed to Aleksandra Wozniak in the quarterfinals. She is scheduled to compete in the East West Bank Classic in Los Angeles later this year.