TENNIS in DEPTH.

Vera Zvonareva overcame a slow start Wednesday to beat Roberta Vinci of Italy 6-3, 6-1 in the second round of the Dubai Championships. The second-seeded Russian dropped serve twice in the opening set, but broke Vinci three times. Zvonareva was more comfortable in the second set, conceding no break opportunities, and she converted all three opportunities on the Italian’s serve. Zvonareva closed out the match when Vinci hit a return wide, and later said she needed time to adjust to the court after having a first-round bye. “On this court, the ball is very light. Her slice skids,” Zvonareva said. “So if you just try to get to the ball and just hit it, you will probably overhit it and your ball will go like three meters out. Here you have to wait a little bit longer, Once you make those little adjustments, you figure out how the ball bounces on the court, how it flies here, then you already know which shot you should pick. “I’m pretty happy with the way I managed the match. I had some unforced errors out there. But at the same time, I had some great points. So I’m happy overall. Just looking forward for the next one.” Zvonareva, a quarterfinalist last year in Dubai, improved her record to 4-1 over Vinci. “It’s never easy to play Roberta, she’s a tricky player. It was a tough match,” said Zvonareva, who is coming off a semifinal loss at the Pattaya Open.

Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland also advanced, beating Anastasija Sevastova of Latvia 7-5, 6-4, while Shahar Peer of Israel won her second match in two days by defeating Alexandra Dulgheru of Romania 6-4, 6-2.

Bookmark It

Andy Roddick recovered from losing the first set to see off Lithuania’s Richard Berankis at the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships in Memphis. The American sent down 23 aces, including 11 in the final set, as he battled back to claim a 4-6 6-2 6-3 success in just over one-and-a-half hours. Roddick wasted three break-point chances in the opening set as Berankis made the most of his solitary chance to break the home favourite’s serve, but the former US Open champion took his two break opportunities in the second and one in the third to turn the match around. Berankis’ cause was undermined by his poor serving, the Lithuanian managing just 38% of first serves.

Fourth seed Mardy Fish recorded a straight-sets win over Teymuraz Gabashvili. The American wrapped up a 6-1 7-5 win over his Russian opponent.

Sam Querry, the fifth seed, had a rather tougher test as the American finally saw off Denis Istomin of Uzbekistan 6-7 (5/7) 7-6 (7/5) 6-4 in two hours 21 minutes. It was a match dominated by the serve, with Querry claiming the only break in the final set.

Former world number four James Blake defeated Brazil’s Ricardo Mello 6-4 6-3.

Bookmark It

The world number five had hinted he would take a break after reaching the final of the Australian Open last month, but instead chose to play in Rotterdam only a week later. However, Murray was well below his best and won only five games in losing his first-round clash to Marcos Baghdatis. His decision means the 23-year-old is not due to play again until the Masters Series event in Indian Wells in the middle of next month.

The Dubai tournament is popular with the world’s top players despite being among the second tier of ATP events and was Murray’s first outing after his run to the final in Melbourne last year. However, he lost in the second round to Serb Janko Tipsarevic and was criticised after revealing he was underprepared for the tournament and that he had used experimental tactics. The Scot’s Australian Open hangover then continued into the American hard-court stretch, normally one of his favourite bits of the season. Murray lost in the quarter-finals in Indian Wells and then the first round as defending champion in Miami, and he will be keen to avoid a repeat this year.

Bookmark It

Ivanovic says she’s going coach-less for while. The former No. 1, who has worked with a number of coaches recently, parted ways with Antonio van Grichen last week.

“When you’re 14 or 15 and getting into the routine, then you need someone to push you and point you in the right direction,” Ivanovic said in Dubai. “I’m at the stage of my career when I know what my goals are and when I know I have to work hard in order to succeed. There is no need for someone to repeat it into my ear every day. They are really good at tactics but I sometimes pay too much attention to the technical aspect of my game that I forget what I am really doing. I over-analyze everything, that’s why I’ve decided to give it a rest. I’m not looking for a new coach and we’ll see how it goes.”

Well it didn’t go too well as she was beaten 4-6, 7-6, 62 by veteran Patty Schneider in the first round. Once again it was her poor serving that cost her so many points and disrupted her rhythym.

Petra Kvitova lost in the first round of the Dubai Championships on Tuesday, falling to Ayumi Morita 7-6 (2), 7-6 (3) only two days after beating Kim Clijsters to win a tournament in France.

The Czech player, who has won three titles in her career, lost for only the second time this season.

“Well, I think everything was bad for me,” said Kvitova, who is ranked 14th in the world. “I was tired and I felt everything. I couldn’t serve too much because I’m feeling the muscle in the stomach. Yeah, I was slow and tired, so it was tough to play.”

Pattaya Open champion Daniela Hantuchova also lost in the first round. The Slovak became dizzy for a time, saying she “couldn’t keep track of the score” at one point, before losing to Anna Chakvetadze of Russia 6-1, 6-3.

“Felt like I didn’t have much energy on the court,” said Hantuchova, who won her first title in nearly four years in humid Thailand on Sunday. “I was trying and I know the tennis was not very pretty. I was trying my best. … Physically, it was just impossible today.”

Sara Errani of Italy, who lost in the Pattaya final, advanced by beating Slovak qualifier Zuzana Kucova 6-1, 6-4. Another Italian, Flavia Pennetta, landed only 43 percent of her first serves but still defeated Australian wild card Jelena Dokic 6-2, 6-2.

Pennetta, who reached the fourth round of the Australian Open and won her first Grand Slam doubles title in Melbourne, took advantage of a string of unforced errors and 11 double faults from Dokic, a quarterfinalist last week in Paris.

“She can play good tennis but she made a lot of mistakes,” Pennetta said. “It’s not easy to play the first match in a tournament. And it was really windy outside. The weather, it’s really strange here.”

Shahar Peer of Israel, a semifinalist last year, beat Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez of Spain 6-4, 6-1.

Peer jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first set but Martinez Sanchez came back to tie it at 4. Peer went up 5-4 and broke Sanchez to take the set.

The Spaniard, weakened by the flu and coughing during the match, couldn’t keep up in the second set.

Peer was barred from the 2009 tournament because she’s Israeli. This year, she has extra security and her own compound. Still, she said she felt very comfortable in Dubai, where she lost to Venus Williams last year and was seeded ninth this year.

“Obviously, I played good last year,” Peer said. “When you go back to a tournament that you played good, you want to repeat that.”

Bookmark It

Rafa Nadal, and recently crowned Australian Open champion, Novak Djokovic, are scheduled to perform an exhibition match at the ‘Coliseo Cubierto el Campín’, in Bogotá, Colombia on the 21st of march.

The match, which has been described as the “most important event in the history of tennis in Colombia,” will be played on a hard-court and is a best of three sets.

The date, strategically chosen by both players, will be right in between Indian Wells and the Sony Ericsson tournament in Miami.

For more information, visit:http://www.encuentronadaldjokovic.com/

Bookmark It

After being unable even to get through qualifying in a season-opening tournament in India, Milos Raonic and his booming serve have loudly announced his presence on tour. Raonic became the first Canadian to win an ATP Tour title since 1995 by winning a hard-fought match Sunday over defending-champion Fernando Verdasco 7-6 (6), 7-6 (5) in the final of the SAP Open.

Raonic, who grew up in Thornhill, Ont., followed up a run to the round of 16 at the Australian Open last month with a win in his eighth career tournament. It’s part of a stunning start to the year that even he wouldn’t have believed possible if someone told him he would have accomplished all of this back in December. “’Are you Santa? You’re giving me all these great gifts,’” he said he would have asked a prognosticator who predicted these results. In a match that featured two tiebreakers, one break point and no breaks of serves, it was the smallest differences that decided the winner. Verdasco squandered four set points — including two on his serve — in the opening-set tiebreaker and then lost the only minibreak in the second tiebreaker when he hit a backhand into the net after a strong approach shot by Raonic to fall behind 4-2. Verdasco fought off two match points on his serve but once again had no answer for the big-serving Raonic, who won it with a 138 m.p.h. serve that Verdasco hit into the net. Verdasco was upset because a fan yelled out just as he was about to hit the ball, but the point stood despite his complaints to the chair umpire that he was distracted. “What I hope is that there are not people like that in the stadium,” Verdasco said. “If they don’t know the rules in tennis they can go see soccer.”

Raonic had 13 aces and 20 service winners in the match, reaching 149 m.p.h. on the radar gun. The 20-year-old Raonic became the youngest winner on tour since Marin Cilic won in New Haven in 2008 at age 19. Raonic has had quite a run after losing in the third round of qualifying in Chennai, India, to start the year. He went through qualifying and winning three matches in the Australian Open and then won in San Jose. He has shot up the rankings from 156th at the end of last year to a projected spot in the top 60 after this victory. “I can’t stop smiling,” he said. “I’m happy about it and I hope I can keep it going more than six weeks, for a full year schedule, and see where I am at the end of the year.” In a scheduling quirk, he will have to do it against Verdasco, who gets a shot at a rematch in the first round in Memphis on Wednesday.

“I will just pray a lot that he will hit a lot of double faults and I won’t even have to play,” Verdasco said. Verdasco lost just seven points in 12 service games, but it was the four dropped points on his serve in the two tiebreakers that was the difference. With a 6-2 lead in the first-set breaker, Verdasco hit a forehand into the net off a strong approach by Raonic to squander the first set point on his serve. Raonic held on to his serve to cut the lead to 6-5. Verdasco then hit a forehand wide to even up the set and Raonic won it with a backhand winner followed by a service winner, skipping off the court in excitement. Raonic fought off the only break point of the match in the ninth game of the second set and once again took it in a tiebreaker, completing his perfect run through the week where he lost no sets and just one service game. “When it gets close, it comes down to who gets it that day and it comes down to a few points,” Raonic said “I sort of used up my luck today and got out of that first set. In the second set, I was a bit more confident by then and it came out the way I wanted to.”

Raonic, who left Montenegro with his family during a war in 1994, became the first Canadian to win on tour was Greg Rusedski, who won in Seoul in April 1995. The Bay Area has been kind to Canadian tennis players in recent years. Aleksandra Wozniak ended a 20-year title drought for Canadian women when she won at Stanford in 2008. And now Raonic ended the drought on the men’s side in the same building where fellow Canadians such as Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau, Dany Heatley and Dan Boyle star for the San Jose Sharks. Raonic was given a Sharks jersey, a bottle of maple syrup and the winners check for US$92,000. “It’s nice to know a hockey arena isn’t new to me,” Raonic said. “I’ve been in a few of these. This feels like home.”

Verdasco’s run to the final came after a difficult preparation. He had a cortisone shot to help ease the pain of a broken bone in his left ankle after the Australian Open. Then when he was ready to return to practice, he got a fever so he missed two full weeks of practice before coming to San Jose. But he was in fine form all week, dropping just one service game. “For all the practice I did the past two weeks, I did pretty good this week,” he said.

Bookmark It

World number four Robin Soderling retained his World Tennis Tournament title in Rotterdam with a 6-3 3-6 6-3 defeat of France’s Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. The double French Open finalist took his record over Tsonga to 4-0, despite dropping his first set of the week. It was the Swede’s eighth ATP victory from 18 tournament finals.

Tsonga, seeded eighth, had last claimed a tournament in October 2009, and was in with a chance when taking the second set but Soderling picked up his game. Tsonga served impressively in patches, with 20 aces to Soderling’s 12, but lost his serve twice in the first set after securing an early break. He hit back by finishing off some neat approach play with point-clinching volleys – until a break in the eighth game of the decider prompted Tsonga’s downfall. Soderling, picking up his 13th win from 14 matches this year, became the fourth player to retain the Rotterdam title after Arthur Ashe, Stefan Edberg and Nicolas Escude.

Bookmark It

20 year old Petra Kvitova outplayed the newly appointed #1 player Kim Clijsters 6-4, 6-3, to win the GDF Paris tournament. The young Czech player, who has been getting better and better with each match, showed both maturity and control as she methodically took the Belgian apart. Clijsters was out served, out hit, hot foxed and outplayed.

I was reminded of a similarity between Kvitova and Graff, and if this young player continues to improve she may wind up as the next top player on the WTA tour. She has what it takes. A great serve, a big forehand, wonderful defense, and an uncanny knack for anticipating her opponent’s tactics. She played confidently throughout the week in Paris, and defeated an in-form Yanina Wickmayer on her way to today’s final. This match was much closer than the final, and was the best match of the week.

Bookmark It