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By Charles Bricker

I’ve not only seen this Venus Williams comeback before, I think I’ve previously seen that red frock she was wearing on Monday at the Sony Ericsson Open.

Didn’t Miss Kitty wear that outfit in an episode of “Gunsmoke?”

That was a real dance hall costume Williams played in for her round-of-16 win over Daniela Hantuchova, but she wasn’t boogeying very well for much of this match and, though she won and still looks like a bonafide top-10 player, the reality for Venus is that her championship days are probably over.

Is she still a world class player? Yes. Is she still a threat on one of those “any given Sundays?” Or Mondays. Or Tuesdays. Yes. But she hasn’t won any of the top eight Sony Ericsson WTA Tour tournaments she enters since the WTA Championships of 2008, and she doesn’t look as if she has the stuff to win Key Biscayne this week, either.

This 1-6, 7-5, 6-4 victory, extending her record against Hantuchova to 10-0, could easily have been another embarrassing loss.

Her forehand accounted for 14 unforced errors in the first set alone and her second serve continues to give opponents another place to attack. She’s still gritty, of course, and used all of her personal confidence, plus Hantuchova’s case of third-set yips, to revive herself down the stretch to earn a quarterfinal meeting with No. 6 Agnieszka Radwanska.

She’s going to win her share of matches, and I don’t dispute that she could reach the semis here. But it’s a very real question if she’ll ever win another big event ($4.5 million in prize money or more), for a number of reasons.

She’s 29. That doesn’t mean she needs a wheelchair to get on court, but it does mean that there is going to be more of a fatigue factor as she gets deeper into the draws of these major events. The forehand is in and out and there are players a lot better than Hantuchova who will do a better job of exploiting it. There is now a major dropoff in quality and pace between her first and second serves. That second serve at times looks as big as a pumpkin. Finally, the competition at the top is much tougher — not just from her sister, but from Justine Henin and Kim Clijsters, and there are a couple of ingenues out there who also could be a major factor by the end of the year — most notably Yanina Wickmayer and Caroline Wozniacki.

Let’s look at what Williams has done in the last 16 months in the eight biggest tournaments she enters:

* Out in the second round of the 2009 Australian Open to No. 46 Carla Suarez Navarro.

* Out in the semis of the 2009 Key Biscayne to No. 1 Serena Williams.

* Out in the semis of the 2009 Madrid to No. 1 Dinara Safina.

* Out in the third round of the 2009 French Open to No. 31 Agnes Szavay.

* Out in the final of the 2009 Wimbledon to No. 2 Serena.

* Out in the round of 16 of the 2009 U.S. Open to Kim Clijsters, who had no ranking because she had just come back on tour.

* Out in the second round of the 2009 Beijing to No. 39 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

* Out in the final of the WTA Tour Championships to No. 2 Serena.

* Out in the quarters of the 2010 Australian Open to No. 17 Li Na.

We haven’t even gone into injuries here, but with the secretive Williams family, one never knows how serious things are until one of the sisters pulls out of a tournament. Venus is wearing a pretty heavy wrapping on her right leg, from just above the knee to mid-thigh, during the Sony Ericsson Open. It didn’t look to inhibit her running in the least, as she pulled off a couple of running backhands that got people to their feet.

But she’s missed significant time in the past with physical problems and, at 29, it’s only realistic to think she’s going to miss more.

Notwithstanding her tennis garb for this tournament, she’s usually pretty elegant — on and off the court. If she’s going to win something big, it probably will be Wimbledon, where the points are quicker and her serving is more of a plus on the grass. But it’s not the mid-2000s any longer and while she’s still a very competitive force in any match, the championship days are probably over.

Charles Bricker can be reached at nflwriterr@aol.com

I have been reading up on the the Agassi hype revolving his drug abuse. I found it slightly entertaining to say the least. Please understand this: I don’t agree with drug abuse , but I don’t condone it either. To each his own.

One of the articles I have read asked the question as to why Agassi used drugs. Well there is only answer to that: Because it makes you feel good. It makes you feel that you are above the other people. It gives you a feeling of superiority, euphoria and it lifts a heavy weight from your shoulders. That’s why people use drugs on such a large scale. Yes, I included alcohol too. Simply because alcohol is a drug. A hard drug too. Even though it’s more socially accepted.

Was it really wrong to have Andre come out and tell people that he has used crystal meth? And that he wants people to learn from his mistakes? Hm, now that’s a tough question. I would say yes but I have to partially agree with Greg Couch from Tennis Fanhouse. Agassi indeed fails the trust test. And he fails it miserably. In no other interviews he shows any remorse of ever using crystal meth. Now how is he trying to make up for his past mistakes? What are we supposed to learn from his confessions? And that’s where the PR comes in: You want to know? Buy the book. They are hyping it up a lot.

One particular sentence from the article by Greg reminded me of The Godfather scene where Michael Corleone offers the Bishop 600 million dollars for shares in Immobiliare. But it only took 5 million dollars for Agassi to confess his sins. He sold himself out. A guy who has more money than he can ever spend in this lifetime. Hey, he’s got money for two or three generations. And he sold himself out. That’s shameful. Especially with the world in deep economical recession. There are lots of things that can be done with 5 million bucks! So many people that can be helped.

If he wanted to clear his soul, to confess to his sins, then why did he need be paid $5 million to do it. – Greg Couch

But it doesn’t end here.

Many players , like for instance Rafael Nadal, who are currently playing on the tour are saying that Andre’s confessions are damaging the sport.

All it shows, in my view, is the weakness of the doping checks from back then. The vulnerabilities of the system that were fully exploited. If you can get away with a silly and simple excuse like “They spiked my drink” then it only shows how easy it is to get away with drug abuse. No double checking, no extra verification, just a simple letter and you are off the hook.

Agassi admitted today that he used crystal meth for about a year or so. Or so? He doesn’t remember clearly but how do you get away with that? How many doping checks are there on an annual basis? Or did he simply write more letters to the ATP Tour saying that his assistant Slim kept changing glasses when Andre went to the bathroom or so? You know, just for fun.

Perhaps they just took a hair sample from his wig to see how much drugs there was left in his body. Who knows?

Question remains: Did the ATP Tour cover this up? Were they affraid to lose one of their main attractions ? If so then the ATP Tour as an organisation has also failed miserably and managed to singlehandedly castrate the integrity of the sport all by themselves.

The ATP however released a statement that they can’t take any responsibility for a doping case. Only an independant tribunal has that kind of power.

Reading the confessions , I think it’s good that he did what he did. It shows that he is just as vulnerable and susceptible as the next guy. He is, after all a human being and not just a poster boy for philantropy and tennis.