Melbourne, Jan 11 : Australian Open champion Maria Sharapova will not be defending her title this year as she has not fully recovered from her right shoulder injury.

Next week's Australian Open has been rocked by the withdrawal of defending champion Maria Sharapova.

Sharapova's management contacted Melbourne Park officials today with news her right shoulder injury had not fully recovered, the Herald Sun reported.

Australian Open tournament director Craig Tiley confirmed Sharapova's battle for fitness had been lost.

Sydney  - Top seed Serena Williams flirted with disaster before finally emerging from a lengthy sulk to survive 6-3, 6-7 (4-7), 7-5 against Australian Samantha Stosur in the opening round of the Medibank International on Sunday.

Stosur, ranked 51 and with the home crowd in her corner, had a horror day, sending over double-faults on two of her four match points while leading 5-4 in the final set.

Melbourne  - Andy Murray heads to Melbourne for the Australian Open on the back of his fifth victory over Roger Federer in seven career ATP matches against the Swiss.

In addition, Britain's fast-rising player has also stopped Rafael Nadal - and Federer - at the Abu Dhabi exhibition a week ago before beating Andy Roddick on Saturday to win the Doha ATP trophy for the second year in succession.

2009 is shaping up as the best chance in decades for British men to break a Grand Slam title drought stretching back to Fred Perry in 1936 at Wimbledon.

Los Angeles - Darius Miles is back on the Memphis Grizzlies, which is bad news for the Portland Trail Blazers.

Defying a request by the Trail Blazers that could have considerable financial impact, the Grizzlies on Saturday re-signed Miles to a 10-day contract, three days after waiving him.

The Grizzlies announced the move just one day after Blazers team president Larry Miller sent an email to every NBA team threatening legal action if Miles was signed for the sole purpose of disrupting Portland's finances.

Madrid  - Sevilla moved up to second in the Spanish Liga on Saturday with a comeback 3-1 win away to Deportivo Coruna, together with Valencia's 3-3 draw at home to local rivals Villarreal later on

Oberhof, Germany  - Russian Maxim Tchoudov on Saturday won the men's 10 kilometre sprint World Cup biathlon event in Oberhof.

Tchoudov, who won two gold medals, as well as a silver and a bronze at last year's world championship in Ostersund, managed to edge Germany's Michael Roesch into second place by 12.7 seconds.

Third place went to Poland's Tomasz Sikora, who was 25.2 seconds behind Tchoudov. Sikora takes over the overall lead in the World Cup from Norwegian Emil Hegle Svendsen.