TENNIS in DEPTH.

Caroline Wozniacki regained the number one ranking she lost only two weeks ago and will immediately face a Saturday semi-final test at the Dubai Championships against former top-ranked player Jelena Jankovic. Wozniacki, displaced for only a few weeks by Kim Clijsters after the Belgian won the Australian Open, earned a Dubai quarter-final victory over Shahar Peer Friday 6-2, 6-4. Serb Jankovic, who finished 2008 on the WTA top spot, outlasted fourth seed Samantha Stosur of Australia in a 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (7-4) marathon lasting just under three hours. That pair produced 30 break point chances with only a third converted as Jankovic fought back from a breakdown in the final set and took victory in a tiebreaker. The emotional Serb has suddenly struck a seam of form after rallying in her final set 24 hours earlier from 5-3 down. It marked her first set of back-to-back wins since the US Open five months ago.

“My God, it’s been an amazing match,” said the winner. “I’m really happy with my performance overall. There were obviously a lot of ups and downs, but the win is the most important. “I was a little bit tired on the court (in the third set) and I felt that I almost had no gas in the tank. But with a positive attitude, I just telling myself to keep going one point at a time. “That’s what I did. I was able to break her, and it’s so tough to break her. I never gave up, and I came out as a winner.”

Wozniacki has never beaten Jankovic in four meetings but will be taking confidence into their upcoming meeting. “It’s nice to be back at number one, it’s a good feeling,” said the 20-year-old Dane. “I gave Kim one week. Hopefully now I’ll have it for a few more weeks. It’s just nice to be able to say you are number one, it’s a good feeling to have.” Wozniacki’s victory was her fifth from six meetings with Israeli Peer, who was competing in the emirate under heavy security with her matches all held on a well-guarded side court at the Aviation club.

Peer last year played under similar circumstances, reaching the semi-finals and losing to Venus Williams. That loss and this one spared organizers the problems of having to stage a final on a side court, with all logistic nightmares that would have meant. “I had a good start, I was very focused going into the match and knew what I had to do. I knew the (outside) court was going to a bit faster and was going to be a bit more open. “I know if I’m playing well that I’m tough to beat. I was happy about the way I started in both sets.” The Danish winner motored through the first set and took a 4-1 lead in the second before her game began to briefly stutter. Peer, whose level suddenly lifted after a poor afternoon, fought back standing down a double break, pulling to within striking distance at 4-5. But Wozniacki, her eye on the ranking prize, steadied enough to get the job done as she won on her first match point after 74 minutes. Peer, ranked 11th, was weighed down by 34 unforced errors in defeat.

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Canada’s Rebecca Marino reached her first career WTA semifinal on Thursday, beating Coco Vandeweghe at the $220,000 Cellular South Cup in Memphis. Marino, at No.6 the only seed to survive through to the quarters, stormed out to a 61 53 lead but had to work overtime to close Vandeweghe out, 61 76(6). Marino saved two set points, one at 5-6, 30-40 and one at 5-6 in the tie-break. “I had a good start, but things got a bit difficult in the second set,” Marino said. “I’m excited to be in my first semifinal – hopefully it’s one of many to come.” Marino fired 14 aces, the most of any player in a WTA match this year. The Vancouver native is the highest-ranked player left in the field; although she’s far from home right now, there’s one thing that might remind her. “Every time I hear about the Grizzlies, I think of Vancouver. It’s funny they’re in Memphis now,” she said of her hometown’s former pro basketball team.

Next up for the 20-year-old Marino is 22-year-old Evgeniya Rodina, who beat qualifier Heather Watson, 63 64. Rodina is playing in her second career WTA semifinal, having done it at Tashkent last year (losing to Alla Kudryavtseva). Marino and Rodina will be playing against each other for the first time.

In the other semi will be two players with more experience at this stage of a WTA event, Lucie Hradecka and Magdalena Rybarikova. Rybarikova has one WTA title to her credit, Birmingham in 2009; Hradecka has been to three WTA finals, Bad Gastein in 2008 and Strasbourg and Istanbul in 2009. In the quarterfinals, Hradecka beat Ksenia Pervak, 64 63, while Rybarikova beat American qualifier Alexa Glatch on Stadium court, 63 62. Rybarikova leads Hradecka in their head-to-head series, 2-1.

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Milos Raonic recorded his sixth straight win Thursday as he hit a staggering 38 aces to beat Radek Stepanek 6-4, 6-7(10), 7-6(1) and reach the quarter-finals of the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships in Memphis. The Canadian showed his mental steel as he held strong to win in two hours and 32 minutes, having squandered four match points in the second-set tie-break. His career-high 38 aces was the most struck in Memphis and the fifth most in a three-set match, since the ATP World Tour began keeping serving statistics in 1991. It was the eighth time in his career on the ATP World Tour that he had hit 20 or more aces in a match.

The 20 year old defeated World No. 9 Fernando Verdasco twice in four days to win his first ATP World Tour title in San Jose last week and advance through the first round in Memphis on Wednesday. World No. 18 Sam Querrey won back-to-back matches for the first time since the US Open when he defeated Argentine Brian Dabul 6-3, 7-6(3) to reach the quarter-finals.

The fifth-seeded Querrey, who is the defending champion at the ATP World Tour 500 indoor tennis tournament, broke serve twice from two opportunities and won 89 per cent of points behind his first serve to wrap up victory in 80 minutes. The American ended a six-match losing streak with his opening win over Denis Istomin on Tuesday.

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Italy’s Flavia Pennetta came back from 4-1 down in the third set to beat seventh-seeded Victoria Azarenka of Belarus 6-3, 6-7 (2), 6-4. Pennetta seemed on her way to a relatively straightforward victory but she blew a 5-1 lead in the second to allow the ninth-ranked Azarenka to level the match.

Wozniacki moved within one victory of regaining the No. 1 ranking after beating Japan’s Ayumi Morita 6-1, 6-0 to reach the quarterfinals of the Dubai Championships Thursday. The 20-year-old Dane, who lost the top spot to Kim Clijsters on Monday, was never seriously challenged by the 57th-ranked Japanese qualifier. She now must beat Shahar Peer of Israel to return to No. 1. Wozniacki lost to Peer in the third round last year.

In earlier matches, U.S. Open finalist Vera Zvonareva and French Open champion Francesca Schiavone were both eliminated in the third round. Alisa Kleybanova beat Russian teammate Zvonareva 6-3, 6-2, while Svetlana Kuznetsova defeated Schiavone 1-6, 6-0, 7-5.

Samantha Stosur of Australia also reached the quarterfinals, beating Swiss veteran Patty Schnyder 6-3, 6-4, while Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland defeated Marion Bartoli of France 6-3, 6-2 and Peer overcame a sluggish start to beat Yanina Wickmayer of Belgium 3-6, 6-4, 6-1.

The highly anticipated match between Schiavone and Kuznetsova lacked the drama of their Australian Open encounter in Melbourne which lasted nearly five hours and was the longest women’s Grand Slam singles match in the Open era. Schiavone won that fourth-round match. After two quick sets that went opposite ways, Kuznetsova needed seven match points to win. “I said to myself, ‘Look, you still have it. You’re good enough. It’s just matter of closing the deal,”’ Kuznetsova said. “I just cannot close it. It’s just one point, a stupid point, but it’s only one. I win like 101 during the match, and I can’t win just final one. It’s funny.”

Kleybanova had six aces against Zvonareva, an Australian Open semifinalist and runner-up at the U.S. Open and Wimbledon. “Maybe the score looked easy, but the match wasn’t really easy today. We had a lot of fighting in many games,” said Kleybanova, who has beaten Zvonareva twice before, the last time in 2009 in Tokyo. Zvonareva, who reached the quarterfinals last year in Dubai, called the match one of her worst recent performances. “Definitely, it wasn’t my day today. I think I didn’t play too good,” she said. “Too many unforced errors. Probably one of the worse matches in a while from my part.”

Stosur, a 2010 French Open finalist who has started slowly this year, hasn’t really been tested yet in Dubai. She only dropped a game in her second round match victory over Sara Errani. Against the 32-year-old Schnyder, Stosur won the first set easily even though she only got 36 percent of her first serves in.

In the second set, Stosur let slip an early break of serve but two double faults from Schnyder helped the Australian player break again for a 5-4 lead before she served out the win with a love game.

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Ana has been forced to withdraw from next week’s Qatar Ladies Open 2011 in Doha with a recurrence of the abdominal muscle injury she sustained in Australia last month.

“It’s very frustrating, because I am so motivated to train and to get more matches under my belt,” said Ana.

“But with this injury I am restricted, especially on the serve, so I just have to rest and then kind of restart my season. I’m sorry to be missing Doha but I’m sure I will be back there in the future.”

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Milos Raonic, fresh off of his first ATP tour win in San Jose, just happened to be drawn against Fernando Verdasco, the man he beat in the final in San Jose, in the first round of the Memphis event. And just to prove that his victory was no fluke, he defeated Verdasco again in a very close match 6-4, 3-6, 7-6.

By now the Spaniard must be convinced that the young Canadian is for real, and is here to stay. 

“Last week gave me a lot of confidence, and confidence makes all the little things go easier. I was happy with the outcome.” Raonic has a quick turnaround now, playing his second round match against Radek Stepanek early on the Thursday schedule.

Verdasco wasn’t the only seed to go down on Wednesday – all four first round matches saw unseeded players upset seeds. Another wildcard, Juan Martin del Potro, upset No.6 seed John Isner, 64 63; Lleyton Hewitt beat No.7 seed Yen-Hsun Lu, 64 76(3); and Florent Serra advanced when No.9 seed Xavier Malisse retired down 62 10 due to a headache. In the first two second round matches of the week, qualifier Robert Kendrick beat wildcard James Blake in an all-American encounter, 76(5) 63, and No.4 seed Mardy Fish battled two hours and 40 minutes to get past Lukas Lacko, 67(5) 64 76(3).

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Sixth seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga continued his good run of form in the Open 13 in Marseille today as he reached the quarter-finals with a 5-7 6-4 6-2 win over Ukraine’s Sergiy Stakhovsky. Frenchman Tsonga, a finalist in Rotterdam last week, took one hour and 49 minutes to seal his win and was joined in the last eight by fourth-seeded Austrian Jurgen Melzer, who beat Italian Andreas Seppi 7-5 6-3.

In first-round action, Croatian fifth seed Ivan Ljubicic was a 6-2 6-4 winner over Kazakhstan’s Andrey Golubev, while there were also wins for unseeded Frenchman Gilles Simon and German Philipp Petzschner, plus French qualifier Edouard Roger-Vasselin.

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Australian Open finalist Li Na was the day’s only major casualty, the fifth seed crashing out 6-7 (6/8) 7-6 (8/6) 6-2 in a two-hour-and-28-minute loss to Belgium’s Yanina Wickmayer.

Caroline Wozniacki rode her luck to edge closer to regaining the world number one ranking at the Dubai Duty Free Championships after a dramatic end to her second-round match with Anna Chakvetadze. Chakvetadze was serving for the second set at 5-3 and 15-15 when she appeared to faint on court, leading to urgent medical attention and the Russian’s enforced retirement from the game. It later emerged Chakvetadze had been suffering gastro-intestinal problems this week and Wozniacki admitted: “It was a shock and scary. I just saw her suddenly collapse on court and I really didn’t know what happened.”

Wozniacki had looked set to cruise through to the next stage after winning the first set 6-1 but a catalogue of errors from the Dane allowed Chakvetadze to control the second set before her abrupt departure.

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