LATEST NEWS ON THE WOMEN OF TENNIS

October 9, 2005: After almost 8 years I am temporarily (I hope) closing down this page. For those of you who are regular visitors you will notice that it has not been updated for almost 9 months. The reason for this is simply that I have not had the time to do it and despite the fact that the Page is probably is still the biggest data base of pictures of women tennis players, it has always annoyed me when I visit pages and they have not been updated. This has also complicated that I was not able to go to Montreal this year so any pictures I have are more than a year old and the main feature of this Page was that almost all the pictures were taken by me. However hopefully the page will return next fall. I already have my tickets in Toronto for next summer and plan to go to California in the spring. Finally to all those who have visited this page I wish to thank-you for being one of the 1.6 million who has done so. The goal was always to offer pictures of the players of the WTA tour, that were not available elsewhere and for free. This I believe was achieved. Again, thanks to all! Bill

November 1, 2003: A Big Day!!! The Front Page has been changed. I started working on The Women of Tennis sometime in late 1995. While there have been any number of changes since that time, the Opening Page was always the same. I got any number of e-mails asking why "so and so's" picture was not in the banner at the top. The simple answer was that she was not playing tennis or, at least, was not on the tour when I built the banner. The new banner better reflects the purpose of the Page which is to provide pictures of as many players as possible rather than pictures of the most popular players. These can be found by the thousands throughout the Internet. It also reflects the secondary purpose which is to give some prominence to Canadian players. When I uploaded the Page for the first time, if I remember correctly, there were 15 players, there are now over 200. Finally, I am a Netscape user so the new look seems to work fine on it but not so good on Microsoft Explorer. I don't enough expertise to correct it.

October 11, 2003: Regular visitors will notice a change to the Canadian Galleries. It is now necessary to go to a secondary page to access the galleries. It is also my intention to do the same with the international players. Makes the addition of new players much easier.

October 6. 2003: There have not been updates to the Page for sometime (a busy spring and summer) however I plan to make regular updates up to Christmas. There should at least 20 new players added by that time. At the same time the WTA has once again changed the addressing of it's Pages, therefore the Bio's will not work except in the most recent updates. This will be corrected over time.

January 5, 2003: A new section has been added to the Page. Wallpaper prepared by Filip Cetkovic. As many of you are aware, despite requests I have not had time do do any wall paper in some time. However Filip has prepared Wallpaper using pictures from this Page and he has kindly agreed to make it available all. If you have a favourite player that is not yet done, Filip has also agreed to try and fill requests. Filip can be reached at vefis@tehnicom.net

November 3, 2002: After a long break I have returned to the Page. I have a large number of new pictures (the joys of a digital camera) from Montreal as well as some hold overs from 2001. I also have about 20 new players to add. Now that winter is coming, I hope the updates will come on a regular basis. Work is being done on the new format and for those of you who are interested of the options being considered, you can click on the following links

http://www.igs.net/~bmitchell/Tennis/test.htm

http://www.igs.net/~bmitchell/Tennis/test1.htm

http://www.igs.net/~bmitchell/Tennis/test/test2.html

http://www.sirhandsomerecords.com/tennis/test2.html

Comments are always welcome but please copy: skrapek@hotmail.com

May 20, 2002: The Page was updated today with Serena Williams as Player of the Month. I have gotten a lot of e-mail over the last couple of year asking why the Williams sisters have not been Player of the Month. Half have been rude, which I ignored but for those that were not I explained there were two reasons. The first was I always gave priority to players that were lesser known than the "stars" of the WTA. The second, and most important, was that I did not have enough pictures. The Williams sisters always play on centre court, where it is very difficult for an non-official photographer like me to get pictures. For the same reason Lindsay Davenport, never has been Player of the Month and Monica Seles appeared just before Serena. It is easier for players like Hingis, who play a lot of doubles and where the games will occassionaly be played on sides courts. For fans of Serena and Venus, Venus will also be there if she ever plays in Canada or I get some pictures of her at another tournament

April 28, 2002: There have been a number of updates since the last time I wrote here as I still not know when I will move to the new format. However as of today, I have updated all the links on the Page and removed those that do not work. Hopefully those that remain will be working for a while. And on a non-tennis note. It is April 28 in Ottawa, there is a snow storm going on and I can here thunder. El Nino II ??

March 3, 2002: Well after two months the new format is still under construction. So I will spend some time over the next month or two doing updates. At last count I have more than 50 players to update as well as about 15 new ones to add. As they say in one of my favourite parts of the world. "Soon come".

Another piece of news is that I will not be able to sell any of the pictures that you find on this Page. After consultation it has become clear, before to sell a picture of the player I would have to have her permission in advance. As the work of trying to get permission form more than 200 players would be a little daunting.

For those of you who have a look at my counter, you will see I am beginning to approach the one million mark. Not bad for a Women's Sport Page.

January 8, 2002: I spoke too soon. While the new format is in the works it is still under construction. I also expect that my pictures that appear on this Page will be available for sale shortly. Look for further news here.

December 1, 2001: This may be the last update before the new format is introduced. The new address will be www.womenstennis.ca. The announcement will be made on this Page when it is ready.

October 25, 2001: After some delays with my shipment from Tanzania, my software arrived and I have begin updates. At the same time the much delayed re-design of the Women of Tennis has begun. While the main Page has not been touched, as of yet, visitors will note that the Player Photo Galleries included in this update, will have changed. Hopefully a model of things to come. The new photos in this update come from my new digital camera, the others from the 35mm will be scanned and added later. However the backlog is still quite large with pictures from Montreal 2000, Australia 2001 and Toronto 2001 to come.

One of the services to be offered by this Page, hopefully before Christmas will be to provide photo prints of all pictures on the Page. Look for further details later.

JULY 24, 2001: After many updates during March, April in May, progress was disturbed by two trips to back to Canada. So I did not make my target. I have made my last update today before I move back to Canada and then go to Toronto for the Canadian Open. I have bought a new digital camera so updates should come quicker come September.

My new e-mail address will be: bilmitc@home.com

I am still working on the re-design of the Page but it is coming slowly. Hopefully again in September.

FEBRUARY 4, 2001: Despite some earlier promises this Page has not been updated since December. The reason for this is that I was in Australia for the entire month of January where I was at 4 different Tennis Tournaments culminating with 6 days at the Australian Open. This has resulted in me having even more pictures to add to the Page. As you will see, I also expect to add 35 new players to the Page. This will bring the number of players featured on this Page to over 200 (202 in fact). The Page reached it's 500,000 hits mark a month or two ago. The bad news is that with the numbers of pictures I have accumulated from Montreal last summer and Australia in January, I will probably not be finished updating until sometime in June.

At the time time I have begun at long last to re-design the Page. Hopefully it will be more much more user friendly and much faster to load. When it will be ready is another question. I probably will also move to another server where more space will be available and I can make more pictures of each player available.

Finally I have given up trying to keep the biographies up to date. Just not enough hours in the day. With the new page I may try to link directly to the SanexWTA Page.