Clijsters Beats Wozniacki To Win 2010 WTA Tour Championships

2009 and 2010 US Open Champion Kim Clijsters of Belgium beat World #1 Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark 6-3 5-7 6-3 in Goha, Qatar to win the season-ending WTA Championships on Sunday. Clijsters won her 3rd tour championship in 2 hours, 20 minutes, following up on wins in 2002 and 2003, by coming back after blowing a 4-1 lead in the second set. 

Altough she will end 2010 ranked World #1, Wozniacki still has not won a major championship and still has not beaten Clijsters, losing in straight sets the only other time they have played on tour, in the 2009 US Open final.

Clijsters was happy to win, saying:

"I felt like it was never going to end," said the Belgian. "It was a really tough battle with some great shots, great tennis and great fitness. I'm glad that I won, obviously it's disappointing for Caroline but I don't know how many more years I'm going to keep doing this. She has a great future ahead of her."

Clijsters ends the year at World #3, just behind 2010 Wimbledon and US Open finalist Vera Zvonareva and ahead of 2010 Australian Open and 2010 Wimbledon champion Serena Williams at #4 and Venus Williams at #5. In 2009, Serena beat Venus to win the tour championships and ended the year ranked #1.

Elena Dementieva Has Retired

by Savannah

Savannah's World

Doha 2010 - Day 3

by Savannah


For a summary of today's action, and an update on the IMG scandal please visit Savannah's World

Doha 2010 - Day 2

For a review of Day 2 play at Doha please see Savannah's World

Jim Courier New U.S. Davis Cup Captain

by Savannah

Jim Courier is to be named the new Captain of the United States Davis Cup team. For more details please go to Savannah's World

Doha 2010 - Day 1

by Savannah

Billie Jean King on the state of her baby the WTA,.

Billie Jean King, who co-founded the Women's Tennis Association and remains among the sport's more forceful advocates, concedes that women's tennis "is not in a great place right now." But King argues that the sport always goes in cycles; this particular down cycle, she said, is due more to freak injuries and bad luck. She also suspects it's exaggerated by media, whom she believes delight in pointing out injury or frailty (real or perceived) among female athletes.

"I just want everybody to be healthy at the same time because we really have depth if we can get them all playing," King said. "We've had a very bad year. But it's not going to be like that forever."

SOURCE

Doha - A Dismal Start

Jelena Jankovic did not have a great second half of the year. Still most people, well me, expected her to suck it up and bring her "A" game to Doha. The opening match between JJ and Vera Zvonareva should have been competitive. Instead JJ dropped the first set 6-3 and disappeared for the second set losing it 6-0. She is still saying she is ill.

For some reason I didn't expect much from the Caroline Wozniacki/Elena Dementieva match and I got even less. The final score was 6-1, 6-1 Wozniacki and it wasn't even that close. Elena is obviously injured but she did play the entire match.

There was one match worthy of the name and that was not between two new school WTA'ers. Francesca Schiavone and Samantha Stosur, neither of whom have official WTA sanctioned nick names both came to play.

I'm sure Franny will be talking to herself after blowing a 4-0 second set lead and losing the set and the match 6-4.

The win has to be a confidence booster for Stosur who tightened up her game winning six games in a row.

There is a lot of speculation that both Elena Dementieva and Jelena Jankovic will withdraw from the tournament. Li Na and Shahar Peer are the alternates. It was announced today that Li is a confirmed player in Bali, an event she said she didn't want to play. We should know more tomorrow.

Wednesday Order of Play - Doha

Khalifa Tennis Complex (from 17.00hrs - 10a Eastern US Time)

1. Vera Zvonareva vs. Victoria Azarenka

2. Kim Clijsters vs. Jelena Jankovic

3. Caroline Wozniacki vs. Samantha Stosur

The Weekend's Winners - and The WTA in the Desert

by Savannah

The WTA wound up it's season with a Premier event in Moscow and an International event in Luxembourg. The only women who got a break were the ones who took one.

Roberta Vinci won the singles title in Luxembourg.

Timea Bacsinszky and Tathiana Garbin were the Luxembourg doubles champions.
Meanwhile in Moscow there was a Victor/Victoria moment.

Victoria Azarenka fought like hell to come back from being down 0-4 in the second set to defeat Maria Kirilenko in straight sets 6-3, 6-4. Kirilenko will have nightmares about that second set.

Meanwhile the Glam Girls team of Flavia Pennetta and Gisela Dulko won the doubles championship.
The ATP staged 250 events in Moscow and Stockholm.

To no one's surprise Roger Federer won easily in Stockholm. It seems Jonas Bjorkman managed to detach himself from Roger's anus.

Eric Butorac and Jean-Julien Rojer won the doubles championship.

In Moscow the team of Dmitry Tursunov and Igor Kunitsyn took the doubles championship.

Viktor Troicki won his first ATP title in Moscow defeating Marcos Baghdatis in three sets.
Congratulations to them all.

Women in the Desert

The WTA Year End Championships begin tomorrow in Doha. The WTA is also introducing it's new logo, featured above with seven of the eight competitor at this event. The group breakdown is as follows:

Maroon

Caroline Wozniacki

Francesca Schiavone

Samantha Stosur

Elena Dementieva

White

Vera Zvonareva

Kim Clijsters

Jelena Jankovic

Victoria Azarenka

The White Group is quite competitive while the Maroon Group is pretty, well, WTAish. May the best woman win.

Idle Chit Chat

As everyone in the world knows Maria Sharapova's engagement to Los Angeles Laker Sasha Vujacic was the big news last week. They look very happy in this picture and I'm glad to see that. Of course, being me, I wanted to see the ring.

Looks like he stepped up to the plate and did right by her. I don't think a date has been set. The NBA season is about to start and her season will start in January. Best wishes to both of them.

Roger Federer - I Have Nothing To Hide

by Savannah

Tennis superstar Roger Federer is lashing out at allegations that he gave inside information about his matches so the president of his management company could place bets ... saying the whole thing is "100% not true."

TMZ broke the story ... Agate Printing, Inc. filed a lawsuit against IMG and its owner, Ted Forstmann, claiming Federer gave Forstmann information about a match he played in at the 2007 French Open ... and Forstmann later used the information to make a $40,000 wager on Roger.

But... at a press conference during an event in China -- Federer said, "It’s disappointing that someone’s throwing my name around. I would never do such a thing."

Federer continued, "My fans know that, the people who know me ... I have nothing to hide. I’m sorry for those who think there is something to the story. But there’s nothing."

SOURCE

Weekend Results

by Savannah

For the results from Shanghai, Osaka and Linz as well as the status of all three year end finals please go to Savannah's World.

The Weekend's Winners

by Savannah

For a summary of the winners in Tokyo and Beijing please go to Savannah's World

Weekend Open Thread

Getty

Members of the Indian Army, Engineer Corp, who are flag bearers at the R.K. Khanna Tennis Stadium watching local tennis star Sania Mirza on centre court ahead of the Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games on October 1, 2010 in Delhi, India.

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Hello, everyone. Life, as you might imagine, for a person running for public office with an election coming in four weeks (or, right now, since people can vote early in Maine), is pure chaos. Safe to say, I've managed to retain most of my sanity, and still make time to farm, harvest, and prepare food for winter storage, but that's about all.

Tennis? What's tennis?

I don't know who's back from injury, or who's out. So please, drop those links, engage in civil debate, and tell me what I'm missing.