Seventy four years have passed since a British tennis player has won a tennis major, but Andy Murray might just be the man to break the curse as he advanced to the finals of the Australian Open on Thursday in Melbourne. Defeating Croatia’s Marin Cilic in dominant fashion, the Scotsman let out a ferocious roar after notching the winning point.

Should Roger Federer defeat Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the other semi-final we’ll be in for a rematch of the 2008 US Open where Federer defeated Murray in the Scot’s only other major final. Murry, the #4 ranked player in the world has become a mega-star in the United Kingdom as he has consistently risen through the rankings in years past. From what he’s shown so far in his young career many tennis experts have said it’s only a matter of time until he wins a major. His time may come soon as all of Britain will be on the edge of their seats on Sunday when Andy Murray takes a swing at history.

Even though it’s not evening yet, the tennis match in Australia that determined the Medibank International’s winner this year has been played. On Friday evening, Elena Dementieva beat out Serena Williams in the finals! And Serena didn’t threaten anyone at all. The winner did a very nice job in stopping Williams, who has been able to push other players beyond their ability. She has won Grand Slams. At the end of the year, the match went the other way, with Williams winning. Elena was ready to play, though, and knew that she had to bring it. In fact, Williams hardly showed up and Dementieva took advantage of it. All of these different tournaments at the moment are setting up the Australian Open which begins in about a week. Are you ready to see this year’s first Grand Slam? It’s not far away yet, so get ready!

Caroline Wozniacki is one of the top female players in the world right now and it’s very entertaining to watch her work on her serving. While she’s young and new to the professional leagues, we have begun to see her develop into a great player. Maybe not a Williams sisters level player but  a quality player who will be in contention for years to come. This growth doesn’t necessarily come without some difficulty, though. She lost in the Sydney Open this weekend, dropping to Li Na in 3 sets. Many of the main competitors think of the Sydney Open as the opening tournament, meant to brush off the cobwebs and get back into tournament level. Maybe Woz is preparing for a huge performance in the Australian open in a couple of weeks. We can only hope.

Ernests Gulbis gave Roger Federer a bit of a scare just the other day when they competed in Qatar. Federer won 6-2 4-6 6-4 but it there were some people biting their fingernails pretty hard, it would seem. Federer is really concerned about getting back into his top level of play, but he has underachieved it for a long time. He wants to get a good big win to start out the season. This might propel him towards an Australian Open win in a couple weeks. He will probably have a tough competitor in Nadal again this year, as it appears that they will both be healthy this year. Nadal has been hard to figure for the last half year or so, because he’s been close to the top of the rankings, but he hasn’t been able to play very much. Then when he does, he underperforms. But both of them got a good start to their season this year, so we’ll see what happens next!

UPDATE: Federer was ousted by Davydenko just a few minutes ago, so it wasn’t the glowing start that he had been hoping for, but it was worthwhile.

It’s been awhile since we’ve had real tennis news to talk about. Dinara Safina is making the headlines right now, because she says that she’s finally feeling better again. She had some big troubles with her lower back towards the end of the 2009 season, leaving her unable to play certain events. She says that she’s ready to play and hopes that she’ll be able to dash back into the lead of the ladies leaderboard once again. She’s still at #1, I believe, but she’s going to need to produce for real in order to make people believe that it was worthwhile. She says she’s rested and ready. She is concerned about the Australian weather, because it’s so hot this time of year, since it’s summer down there. But hopefully the first Australian tournaments can get her a good start to an amazing year.

Nikolay Davydenko, number 6 in the world, is continuing his greatest performances this season. With multiple victories and the fact that many of the best players have been challenged this year, he looks like one of the future powers in tennis. He is certainly hoping that he can continue these winning tactics next season, starting in Australia and then continuing all the way to the US Open and Wimbledon. In the ATP World Tour Finals, for example, he beat all the rest of the top ten players, including Federer and Del Porto. Davydenko has established himself as one of the best players this year and it will be exciting to see if he can’t continue it even further.

Ana Ivanovic is reportedly planning to return to prominence in the tennis world over the next year or so. In 2009, she was riddled with injuries and other problems which she attributed to over-training that caused her ranking to drop below 20 for the first time in years. But now she believes that she has found the trainer that can get her back in shape and able to compete on the world stage again. This is the kind of player that can really bring an A game when she is in the proper shape. The current trainer that she just hired has worked with players like Federer, Stich and many women players as well. This way, she won’t suffer the kinds of stress injuries that we tend to see with an overzealous trainer. We hope to see her back in real action the way that was able to in 07 and 08.

Guess who made Athlete of the Decade just this last week? Nope, you might have thought it would be Federer. Fed has been one of the most talented people in sports for a long time and he dominated the tennis world for a long time. During the last year or so, his age has started to come and catch up with him. His back hurt at certain times and he just wasn’t able to win a lot of competition convincingly. But overall this decade he should be considered perhaps the best athlete in the world. But Tiger Woods has been named Athlete of the Decade by the Associated Press. I daresay that he’s not celebrating the way most of us would, since the latest reports put him in a depressed mood on his yacht. But congratulations to him nevertheless. Hopefully both of these guys will continue producing amazing sporting moments for all of us for years to come!

Zheng Jie has finally got herself separated from the Chinese Tennis Association. The hope is that she’s going to be able to have a bit more freedom to choose where she competes, how often and with whom. This way, she can start working her way up in the rankings faster than she usually does. Have we seen the last of Zheng? I hope not! Her style of play is top notch, but the CTA chief says that he thinks Zheng has actually gotten worse since she left earlier this year. Hopefully Jie will be able to get herself moving next season when she might be able to get herself into the Finals of Wimbledon and other Grand Slam tournaments. She has a lot of strength and just needs to get the coaching back to where it’s supposed to be.

Last week and this week there is an interesting debate taking shape about the potential for adding mixed doubles to the London Olympics schedule. This is a nice idea and it would be great to see what they end up doing with it. There are some problems that seem to arise everytime that mixed doubles happens. It was summed up by a tennis commentator back in the 70s, saying that mixed doubles is like the men’s game, just with two women on the court. This isn’t nearly as true now as it was then, because with some of the strongest players coming from the women’s game, the men can’t just ignore the women anymore. Just imagine a Federer and Serena Williams type combination. Obviously, they’re from different countries, so that wouldn’t happen, but just the image of two very strong players on each side of the net would be amazing. Why not mixed singles? I disagree with the writer of the opinion article on most of the counts he indicates, but clearly there are some issues to be ironed out.