The Williams sisters saw off their semifinal opponents to reach the final of the $4,550,000 Sony Ericsson Championships – Doha 2009.

Jelena Jankovic entered the semifinals more due to luck than anything else. She lost the matches she played against healthy opponents, and won two thanks to injured Dinara Safina and Caroline Wozniacki. Today she won the first set but eventually lost to defending champion Venus Williams 5-7 6-3 6-4, who has thus moved to the finals.

Venus will next play sister Serena Williams, who had a 6-4 0-1 retirement victory when Caroline Wozniacki pulled out with a left abdominal strain after just 45 minutes of play. It is yet another unfortunate injury for Wozniacki this week, who had been troubled by a leg injury throughout the tournament.

Serena leads an all-time record against Venus 12-10, and is coming into the encounter with three successive victories over her sister, including the extremely tight one here in Doha a few days ago. (photo via Sony Ericsson WTA Tour)

Jelena Jankovic had a very easy route to the semifinals of the Sony Ericsson Championships. After falling to Victoria Azarenka in her first round-robin match, the Serb won her second round-robin match with Dinara Safina retiring after just 12 minutes of play, and today her opponent was weary Caroline Wozniacki, who practically barely survived her yesterday’s match.

Prior to the encounter with Wozniacki, Jankovic had spent just 95 minutes on court, while the Dane spent five hours and 48 minutes. Jankovic beat Wozniacki 6-2 6-2. However, Wozniacki could  advance to the semifinals too, if Victoria Azarenka loses to Agnieszka Radwanska in the match which is currently in progress.

In the other match of the day, Svetlana Kuznetsova beat fellow Russian Elena Dementieva 6-3 6-2, and has thus sent Venus Williams into the semifinals.

The third secured semifinalist is Serena Williams, who has earned a perfect 3-0 result at this year’s Championships.

To sum up: Maroon Group semifinalists are Venus and Serena Williams and White Group semifinalists are Jelena Jankovic and Caroline Wozniacki/Victoria Azarenka. (photo: Ralf Reinecke)

It didn’t look like that in the beginning, but the match between Caroline Wozniacki and Vera Zvonareva turned into a dramatic encounter at the Sony Ericsson Championships.

Wozniacki let a 6-0 5-2 lead slip when Zvonareva evened at one set apiece after the second-set tiebreak in which she even saved two match points. Wozniacki built a 3-1 lead in the third set, but the leg that caused her withdrawal from Luxembourg last week stated hurting again. Then Zvonareva won four of the next five games for a 4-3 lead. Still, Wozniacki didn’t give up and despite pain and tears that I have to admit frightened me, the Dane won the match 6-0 6-7(3) 6-4.

The match against Zvonareva was Wozniacki's second marathon in two days. In her previous match she beat Victoria Azarenka after losing the first set and saving a match point in the third.

Zvonareva was last year’s runner-up and this year she entered the Championships as an alternate, after Dinara Safina’s withdrawal. (photo: Ralf Reinecke)

The field has been set for the inaugural Commonwealth Bank Tournament of Champions in Bali, a season-ending event featuring top ten highest-ranked players who have won an International tournament during the 2009 season but who are not competing at the Sony Ericsson Championships, which features the top eight singles players of the season.

LIST OF THE PLAYERS PARTICIPATING IN BALI

Direct Entrants
RANK (as of 10/26/09) / PLAYER / INTERNATIONAL TITLE/S WON
No.12 Marion Bartoli (Monterrey)
No.13 Samantha Stosur (Osaka)
No.19 Yanina Wickmayer (Estoril, Linz)
No.27 Anabel Medina Garrigues (Fes)
No.31 Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez (Bogota, Bastad)
No.32 Shahar Peer (Guangzhou, Tashkent)
No.39 Melinda Czink (Quebec City)
No.42 Agnes Szavay (Budapest)
No.44 Aravane Rezai (Strasbourg)
No.46 Magdalena Rybarikova (Birmingham)

Wildcards
No.25 Sabine Lisicki
No.100 Kimiko Date Krumm

The $600,000 Commonwealth Bank Tournament of Champions will take place November 4-8, 2009, and will feature an innovative 12-woman round robin singles format (four groups of three players). (source: Sony Ericsson WTA Tour)

Serena Williams saved a match point in the deciding set to defeat sister Venus Williams for the third time in a row.

Second-seeded Serena lost the first set, then won the second, and in the third set she established a two-break lead, 4-1. Seventh-seeded Venus, defending champion at the Sony Ericsson Championships, followed with winning five of the next six games to go up 6-5 and even earn a match point. Serena fought it off, held for 6-all and won a tiebreak for a 5-7 6-4 7-6(4) victory.

As already mentioned here on Women’s Tennis Blog, Serena will finish the year ranked No.1. Serena learned that after the match with Venus, as she secured the ranking by virtue of Dinara Safina’s withdrawal who played the preceding match. (via Sony Ericsson WTA Tour)

Dinara Safina handed a match to Jelena Jankovic, pulling out from the Sony Ericsson Championships in Doha when serving at 1-1 in the first set. The reason for the Russian’s withdrawal is a back injury, which is likely to prevent her from playing the start of the next season, including the 2010 Australian Open.

Safina said the bone structure in her lower back is "starting to fracture", and that she has had the injury for three months. Today, she couldn't handle the pain.

Jankovic lost her first round-robin match to Victoria Azarenka, so this present from Safina must have been welcome.

Safina regained the top-ranking on Monday, but she will again hand it to Serena Williams, who will finish a season at No.1 for the second time in her career.

Earlier in the day, Caroline Wozniacki beat Victoria Azarenka 1-6 6-4 7-5, recovering from a first set blowout and saving a match point in the third set. Azarenka was leading by a break four times in the decider, but Wozniacki fought back each time. It was Wozniacki's first match at the Sony Ericsson Championships ever. (photo via Sony Ericsson WTA Tour)

Once again top-ranked player Dinara Safina did a photoshoot for Harper's Bazaar, wearing smoky eyes and pretty much vamp clothes.

How do you like Safina's modeling?

(via Forty Deuce)

The first match of the Sony Ericsson Championships was between Victoria Azarenka and Jelena Jankovic. The Belorussian debutant at the Championships triumphed in straight sets 6-2 6-3, making 15 unforced errors compared to Jankovic’s 33.

The second match of the day featured defending champion Venus Williams and Elena Dementieva. Williams entered the encounter with an impressive 9-2 record against Dementieva, including six straight wins over the Russian. The American built a 6-2 3-1 lead in the match at the season-ending Championships, and looked to be extending her streak, when Dementieva fought back to eventually take a 3-6 7-6(6) 6-2 victory.

The first day of the round robin stage at the Sony Ericsson Championships was closed with Serena Williams’ tight win over Svetlana Kuznetsova, 7-6(6) 7-5. Williams came back from behind multiple times to have her revenge for the quarterfinal loss to Kuznetsova at the 2009 French Open. (photo: Ralf Reinecke)

Ana Ivanovic has fallen from the already disappointing No.16 to No.22 in the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour singles rankings.

Ivanovic’s current position is likely to be her year-end ranking for 2009, which will be her worst year-end ranking in five years. The last two years she finished fourth.

Remember this Ivanovic’s statement from the beginning of this month:

On the positive side, I am still No.11 in the world. I have no clue how I am ranked so highly, but to look on the bright side, I can't play any worse than I did this year and I'm still in the top 20!

No surprise, good circumstances didn’t last that long! (photo: Ralf Reinecke)

Timea Bacsinszky of Switzerland defeated German Sabine Lisicki 6-2 7-5 at the BGL Luxembourg Open to claim her first Sony Ericsson WTA Tour title in her first career final.

The 70th ranked Bacsinszky, unseeded in Luxembourg, wasn’t the favorite in the final. She was playing sixth seed Lisicki, ranked 42 places ahead of her in the rankings, who won Charleston and played Wimbledon quarterfinals this season.

In the semifinals, the 20-year-old Bacsinszky upset new member of the Top 20 Yanina Wickmayer.

Before this week's BGL Luxembourg Open, Bacsinszky's best career results on the Tour were four semifinals, two last year and two earlier this year.

Additional info: Bacsinszky launched her official website on Sunday. (photo: Ralf Reinecke)