Dinara Safina Changes Coaches

Dinara Safina of Russia hits a return to Kim Clijsters of Belgium during their match at the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne January 18, 2011.     REUTERS/Petar Kujundzic

By Parvez Fatteh, Founder of http://sportingummah.com, sports@muslimobserver.com

Dinara Safina would like to change her recent misfortune, so she has changed coaches once again. She has signed on with Davide Sanguinetti as her new tennis coach. She had just changed coaches late last year from Zeljko Krajan to Gaston Etlis, the latter leading Safina through a tough pre-season training regimen in Buenos Aires. But after losing in the first round of three straight tournaments in 2011, including an embarrassing 6-0, 6-0 loss in the first round of the Australian Open to Belgian Kim Clijsters, Dinara ended her working relationship with the Argentine.

Safina, sister of former men’s number one Marat Safin, was number one in the WTA singles rankings as recently as April of 2009, but injuries and poor play have been the norm since then. Now she has tumbled all the way down to number 117 in the world. Hopefully this change in coaches will trigger her return to the top of the sport.

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