Sharapova withdraws from Brisbane International

Defending champion Sharapova, a five-time grand slam victor, announced she was withdrawing from the tournament just hours before her opening round match against compatriot Ekaterina Makarova due to a forearm injury.

World No. 1 Williams was forced to retire from her first singles match at the mixed-team Hopman Cup in Perth yesterday.

She barely played after the US Open, although she returned in the International Premier Tennis League in Manila last month.

With Halep and Maria Sharapova both injury withdrawals, world No. 3 Garbine Muguruza has rocketed into favouritism to begin her 2016 campaign with a WTA title.

And perhaps that’s for the best – the 26-year-old Azarenka has booked a second round showdown with top seed Simona Halep.

Third-seeded Caroline Wozniacki resisted the fate of other seeded players at the tournament when she won the first 11 games of a 6-0, 6-2 win against Christina McHale.

The Azarenka – Bonaventure match will be aired live on Belarus 5. I’m very curious to see if Muguruza can start the season off strong, and prove that she is a main stay among the game’s elite.

Sharapova will head straight to Melbourne to continue her preparations for the Australian Open.

Azarenka will play 2015 US Open runner-up Roberta Vinci in the quarter-finals.

Sharapova has always been dogged by injuries and missed last year’s US Open with a leg muscle injury and then suffered an arm injury on her return in China in October.

Romanian tennis player Simona Halep has learnt from her new coach Darren Cahill how to say “hello, mate” in an amusingly broad Australian accent, and discovered the meaning of the once-mysterious word that is “brekky”. Her place in the draw was taken by Margarita Gasparyan.

The hits kept coming yesterday with another Aussie, James Duckworth, losing in three sets to eighth-seeded Austrian Dominic Thiem 6-3 4-6 3-6. The 21-year-old Belgian is ranked 170th.

The top two seeds in the ASB Classic in Auckland, New Zealand went out in first-round upsets, with defending champion Venus Williams losing 6-7 (4), 6-3, 6-2 to Russian teenager Daria Kasatkina and 2014 victor Ana Ivanovic beaten 7-5, 6-4 by Naomi Broady.