TENNIS in DEPTH.

Samantha Stosur, one of the best doubles players in the world, shocked Dinara Safina 6-1, 6-4 at the Miami Sony Ericsson Championships. Safina, the #2 seed has now fallen short of reaching the finals at both Indian Wells and Miami.

Afterwards, Safina was extremely frank about her performance: “I think [it was] just a bad match for me. It was just a disaster match. She’s a great player. She played very good, but from my side, I just can say it was sad the way I played today. Just basically I wasn’t playing. I go to the court, and I don’t even fight for it. So it’s just bad behavior from my side. The champions, they don’t do this. It’s a good punishment for myself. I have to get smarter.”

In another match played at the same time as the Stosur/Safina match, Agnes Szavay of Hungary, who is ranked #25 defeated Ana Ivanovic 6-4, 4-6, 6-1. There was a brief rain delay during the second set when Szavay was leading by 3-0, but the delay didn’t help Ana’s concentration as she was only able to win one sevice game in the set.

“I’m really disappointed with today’s game,” said Ivanovic. “I hardly did anything well today. I couldn’t really hold my serve. And just the way I started, I felt like I had so many chances early on in the match. I always was missing by a little bit, and got really down on myself. It was kind of hard to pick up from there. I think [the reason was] I sort of expected some things would come easier today on the court than they actually did. It was tougher than I expected.”

Szavay now goes on to face Belarusian 11th seed Victoria Azarenka, who secured her place in the round of 16 with a 6-1, 6-4 victory over Anna Chakvetadze, the No. 22 seed from Russia. The 19-year-old Azarenka came into the Sony Ericsson Open on the back of her second WTA Tour title in Memphis (d. Wozniacki) and a semifinal appearance last week in Indian Wells (l. to Zvonareva). She also titled in Brisbane (d. Bartoli) at the start of the season.

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