Venus hopes someone on earth calls

It was another day with drizzle and downpour Tuesday at Wimbledon, so everybodyon the All England Club's grounds have to go into their rain delay frame of mind. Yesterday afternoon, a long table at the back of the players' restaurant was occupied by constant companions on the tour Venus Williams, her mother Oracene, Alexandra Stevenson, her mother Samantha, and a few other friends. Venus was barely paying attention to the goings on at the table, twirling her cell phone around on the table top. The last time Venus was spotted off-court was Saturday evening standing outside the Indian restaurant in Wimbledon Village chatting on that very cell phone.

The occupants at the table were enthusiastically involved in playing cards. It was apparently a game of high stakes with the brown sugar cubes on the table serving as betting chips -- let's hope they didn't put those sugar cubes back in the sugar bowl.

Vital stats show rising power of women

Computer giant IBM has 50 `data capturers' at courtside recording every single point for match reports that have become an essential tennistool.At the touch of a button, you can become an instant expert on everything from tie-breaks to tornado-fast serves. Pete Sampras's coach, the late Tim Gullikson, was so meticulous in his pursuit of perfection that he studied Goran Ivanisevic's Wimbledon match statistics before they met in the final.Despite all the moaning about power tennis killing the men's game, Sohl insists their serves are not getting that much faster. It is the women who are belting it harder. ``In 1993, Marc Rosset was hitting the ball at 134 miles (215 km) an hour. Greg Rusedski is now up at 138 miles an hour. By comparison, Steffi Graf was serving at 106 miles an hour nine years ago. Now she is still hitting at about the same speed -- but she has now been overtaken by at least half a dozen other women.