Well it has been an interesting week with shocks occurring in basically every tournament. The WTA Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships was won by Venus Williams, a well deserved victory. She had to face many tough opponents namely Elena Dementieva and Serena Williams and others before getting the title however besides the match against Serena she beat everyone else in straight sets and relatively easy matches. Of course the shock of the top draw was Agnieszka Radwanska losing to her younger sister besides that Serena Williams showed her dominance even though she retired injured last week.
However once we looked at the bottom draw everything went haywire. Svetlana Kuznetsova lost to Elena Vesnina who also beat Na Li and Dominika Cibulkova. Svetlana losing was a slight shock to the system but then Jelena Jankovic lost to Kaia Kanepi who eventually reached the semifinals. Virginia Razzano was probably the talk of the tournament as she managed to reach the finals even with the best players in the tour participating in this event. To name a few she beat Safina, Hantuchova and Zvonareva to eventually reached the finals where she lost in straight sets to Venus. But honestly if she had won Dubai I would be in a state of disbelief!
Dubai was in a way a mess for the top seeds but at least it wasn't the case at Memphis with my tip for the title Victoria Azarenka winning the tournament. Other players of note were Michaella Krajicek's somewhat comeback to the bigger tournaments and only being denied by Caroline Wozniacki, Anne Keothavong who reached the semifinals but was then destroyed by Wozniacki yet again 6-1,6-0 and of course Victoria Azarenka's win who I've always thought as the best teen currently in the Top 20.
Things are still unfinished at Bogota but the shock was definitely Flavia Pennetta losing in the first round leaving Gisela Dulko to finish the goods off and Carla Suarez Navarro's retirement halfway into the match. This left the tournament with Gisela Dulko as the highest seed ranked 44th. But hopefully Gisela will grind out a win against Marta Jose Martinez Sanchez.
The mens side was also interesting. Memphis will now see Roddick Vs. the in form Stepanek (I hate to say!) Sadly beforehand favourites of mine Kei Nishikori and Tommy Haas had lost in the first round. Lleyton Hewitt also showed some sign of form as he beat James Blake and managed to push Roddick to 3 sets. Del Potro is also rapidly losing the form that got him to the Top 10 in my opinion but we'll see when he plays in his next tournament.
Yeah Juan Monaco is in the final! I've waited so long for that! He also defeated the top seed David Nalbandian en route and will face Tommy Robredo in the final.
Finally at Marseille my worst nightmare occured! Djokovic lost to Tsonga - for the 4th time straight! Marat Safin also lost in the first round. The only consolation was Feliciano Lopez making it to the quaterfinals and pushing Tsonga to 3 sets and Youzhny also making the quaters. Hopefully Djokovic will find form again because at the moment he is looking more like a 5th seed than a 1st seed.
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