Singles Round Robin Draw

Serena & Venus are in the heavier group as usual.

Players that have won grand slams and who are older are in the maroon group and players that have not won grand slams and who are relatively younger are in the white group.

Match & TV Schedule

The White Group should be renamed the "Somebody's Gotta Win This Round Robin, So Why Not You?" Group. It'll be a challenge to see who is slumping more. That said, the Maroon Group is also limping into the Year-End. Well, other than Sveta. Who would have thought that Kuznetsova would be the only player heading into a significant tournament on a win streak?

Azarenka def Jankovic 62 63

I didn't see the match, but it looks as a comfortable win for Azarenka

Dementieva def Venus 36 76 62

Venus should have closed in the second set. Elena D tried to choke in the tie break, but once she won it, she controlled the match as Venus wasn't up to the fight physically.

I'm feeling like it's pretty much over for Venus at this point. She went on a tear last year from Stuttgart through Acapulco and Miami this year. Other than Wimbledon and Stanford, it's been unimpressive stuff from the elder Williams, though her knee may have been a factor. I don't know if she has any more hot streaks left in her. Maybe she'll have one or two last hurrahs in Wimbledon. I really really wonder what happened between the semis of Stanford and the finals. She absolutely killed Sharapova and Dementieva. But then she struggled with Bartoli in the finals and has been playing like a player who is ranked between #11 and #20 ever since. It's hard to be too upset, because she comes across as so happy and positive these days. Maybe she has just lost the desire, sort of how Steffi decided she wasn't going to play the U.S. Open in 1999 and basically ended her career. I great end to her career would be her retiring next year, only to reinvent herself in two years as a serve-and-volleyer, where she dominates the tour one final time and completes the grand slam collection with titles in Paris and Melbourne.

Meanwhile I just saw that Serena fought through to beat Svetlana, who had to have been playing with some confidence. I don't ever worry about Serena's hunger. She always wants to compete.

Venus is such an enigma. Now that Chakvetadze and Szavay and Vaidisova have all headed into the sunset, and Je-lame-a is kind of just taking up space, she's easily the player who frustrates me most these days. I was going to flip out if she blew a third match this week having won the first set and having opportunities in the second to finish things, but luckily for her Kuznetsova let it slip out of her hands as the finish line approached before she could.

(Speaking of Sveta, she used to drive me up the wall also, but I'm very Zen about her career since she nabbed the FO this year - really she only needed to pick up a second Slam to get that off her back, and everything else from here is gravy for her - so if she wants to flake out here and there as per her style, it's okay now.)

It kind of seems as though Venus has a habit of not closing out these kinds of matches, and some of her more infamous losses in the past few seasons - such as Pironkova and Kvitova - as well as upsets this year (Suarez Navarro, Kleybanova, the first Pavlyuchenkova loss) also saw her lose after taking the first set. Her matches against Jankovic kind of typify the pattern and are almost always three-set struggles (8 of the 9 have gone the distance) where more often than not she had won the first set. As long as I was looking up that H2H, I did a quick tally of her losses since 2007, and 13 out of 36 - an even third - have come after winning the first set (23 have been 3-setters). I have no idea if that's typical of the other top women, since I've already wasted enough time trawling through stats but it seems a bit telling maybe. It's unfair but mentally I compare it to records like Rafa's (exactly one Slam loss when winning the first set, and that was struggling with his knees against Ferrer at the USO).

At any rate, I'm not sure if she's going to head into a Mauresmo-esque spiral - which is my guess - or if the final phase of her career is just going to include few peaks among the increasingly many valleys. I think it would be simpler to take if she just had puzzling flat losses, where she was never in the match, instead of struggles where she seems to flake out at the end and the impression is left that she could and should have won. Holding match point against Serena the other day, for instance, although given that she came back from two breaks in the third to even get to a winning position at all makes it easier to excuse.

So now that I got the Venus talk out of the way, I'll discuss Doha in general. How about that Wozniacki? She's kind of like the new Jelena - tough to put away and willing to play through injury if that's what it takes to grit out a win, all on the basis of her superior consistency and defence. I don't think, as with Jelena in her prime, it will ultimately win her any Slams, but it will keep her in the Top 10 for a while. But the Azarenka win, where she won against the odds, and the Zvonareva win, where she managed to bounce back from letting the match get away from her after losing leads in both the second and third sets and holding match points in the second, were both very impressive. Unfortunately it may not be enough, since she will probably not recover in time to defeat Jankovic today, and Azarenka will very likely defeat Radwanska, who despite the ranking points and cash on offer will probably not have her heart in that match given she's just a sub, all of which means it will be Jankovic and Azarenka who advance instead.

Assuming I could guarantee Wozniacki won't be a risk for retirement this week, the semis I'd like to see would be Serena versus Azarenka and Venus versus Wozniacki. Which would probably mean an all-sister final, but the newcomers would have come good on their debut and wouldn't be pushovers (especially since Azarenka has given Serena tough matches before, and Wozniacki's steady retrieving game is the kind that can give Venus fits, like Pennetta and Jankovic have done).

In other news, good riddance to Safina, although it's odd that if she had really had this bad back all along that she wouldn't have cited it when flaming out like she did at the USO and against that qualifier ranked in the 200s the other week. It would have been nice if she had let last year's finalist, countrywoman and co-medallist Vera have her spot from the get-go, although given how that turned out, seems it wouldn't have mattered. Meanwhile, Serena and Dementieva have now played five times this year (and it could have been six if Serena didn't pull out of the Paris indoors), almost have as many times as they've ever played total. Serena has now won all the matches in the big events and lost the others, typically given her pattern this year overall, although of course the Wimby encounter was a thriller.

Given the number of fall-from-ahead losses Venus has had in the past two years, I nominate her to be an honorary Russian, with all the related mental issues. She held two match points against Serena. She was serving against Elena for the match. She had two match points against Kuzy, and lost both of those, before sneaking away with the win. Just as Serena can't be counted out even with match points down, Venus can't be counted on putting away a match these days, even with successive match points. The good thing about Russian Head Syndrome, is that you are still allowed to have awesome runs, which may even result in slam victories, so Venus could very well grab her 8th slam at Wimbledon next year.

Maybe WTA should rethink the format. The "white group" was a mess.
Injured Wozniacki winning against headcases Azarenka and Zvonareva. Jankovic qualifying because she gets all injured opponents she can. And then the group going to be decided by a match between an injured headcase and the alternate of the alternate!!
So in the end 2 injured players withdrawing (Safina and Znovareva) , an injured player still playing (Wozniacki), an injured player collapsing in the decisive set (Azarenka)...and Jankovic.

I can't wait for a full season of Cljisters and Henin in the mix. Venus and Serena have no competition on the tour with the assorted head cases and immature youth. The Belgians will bring back their talent and their grit and the Williams will have some real competition.