In Omair's statistical preview of the Australian Open quarterfinal between Victoria Azarenka and Agnieszka Radwanska the numbers were more on Radwanska's side, however, the Pole lost 6-7(0) 6-0 6-2. Omair would now like to have a closer look at what happened there.

When Victoria Azarenka entered the Rod Laver Arena today, she had something going on in her mind, her possibility of overtaking the top spot from Caroline Wozniacki, and that thing seemed to affect her in the first set tiebreak where she could not win a single point against Agnieszka Radwanska. But from then on, it was all Azarenka and she solidified her status as title contender with this win.

Radwanska walked on to the Rod Laver Arena today with a mission of her own, she wanted to make it fifth time lucky and enter into her first Grand Slam semifinal match and it seemed that she would, after the first set. But from then on Radwanska could not keep that level and lost to the red hot Azarenka.

Radwanska, just like Wozniacki in her quarterfinal, entered the match with cleaner stats, and Azarenka, just like Kim Clijsters, entered the match with not so good stats, but both Clijsters and Azarenka emerged out of their matches as the cleaner players and winners.

AGNIESZKA RADWANSKA STATS

Radwanska entered the match with 75% points won on her first serves when they landed in and her first serve percentage did not flop, but her winning percentage on the first serve dropped dramatically, and to add to that so did her winning percentage on second serves. You can never win a match against Azarenka by winning just 29% of your second serves or 47% of your first serves. As if that was not enough, Radwanska entered the match with a positive winner-UE differential of 27, but came out of the match with a negative 15 winner-UE differential. Radwanska will have to wait for the next Grand Slam to see if she can manage to make it to the semifinals. Read more »

After showing you his numbers analysis for the quarterfinal between Caroline Wozniacki and Kim Clijsters, our stats expert Omair made another Australian Open quarterfinal preview for you, Victoria Azarenka vs. Agnieszka Radwanska.

Agnieszka Radwanska has lost a set so far at the Australian Open, while Victoria Azarenka is yet to lose more than four games in a set. Despite that, when we look at numbers, Radwanska comes out as the cleaner one.

If we look at the Grand Slam results, we see that it is the sixth quarterfinal appearance for Azarenka and fifth for Radwanska, while Radwanska has yet to move beyond the quarterfinal stage of a major tournament, Azarenka did it at last year's Wimbledon when she lost to the eventual champion, Petra Kvitova, in the semis. Interestingly, it was Azarenka's fifth Grand Slam quarterfinal appearance when she finally moved beyond the quarterfinal stage, and this is Radwanska's fifth quarterfinal appearance. Azarenka and Radwanska are friends – will Radwanska follow in the footsteps of her friend and make it fifth time lucky or will she fade away, only time will tell us.

If we look at their head-to-head record, Azarenka has won six of their nine encounters and their latest coming at this year's Sydney in the semifinal, where Azarenka won in three sets.

Let us have a look at what the numbers suggest about their form so far at the Australian Open.

When we look at numbers, they are quite close in almost all departments. However, Azarenka has an upper hand by a huge margin in the 2nd serve winning percentage, but she also has a huge number of double faults, averaging at 4+ per match so far in the tournament (equal to Kim Clijsters' double faults). Read more »

The 2012 has gained its full swing with the Australian Open, and our loyal contributor and reader John Bolan would like to share his predictions of how the Top 10 rankings will look like at the end of the season. Don't forget to share your Top 10 picks in the comments, as John will send the person whose predictions turn out to be the closest to the actual 2012 year-end Top 10 a picture with an autograph of a Top 10 player. Nice incentive!

Once again, it is time to pick the Top 10 players in the order they will finish on December 31, 2012. We have had a few weeks to observe which players have played well this year. Logic, injuries and where the players finished for 2011 are the main criteria used to make these picks.

My pick for number 1 in 2012 is Victoria Azarenka (I also picked Victoria for number 1 in 2011). She squeaked by Maria Sharapova for third place last year, but is definitely a rising young star whose time has come. Maria is my pick for the runner-up spot – number 2. Let’s hope she stays healthy for the remainder of the year.

Three players who have already been injured this year are Kim Clijsters, Serena Williams and Andrea Petkovic. Do we take a chance and put any of them in the Top 10? Kim is my #3 pick and Serena #4. Although Andrea is the most sensational player in women’s tennis, she is seriously injured and will miss months on the tour in 2012. Read more »

Caroline Wozniacki, Jelena Jankovic, Li Na, Kim Clijsters, Victoria Azarenka and Agnieszka Radwanska all advanced to the fourth round of the Australian Open and only Azarenka lost more than four games in a set.

Wozniacki and Jankovic will meet in the fourth round, after Wozniacki moved on with a commanding victory over Monica Niculescu 6-2 6-2 and Jankovic cruised past Christina McHale 6-2 6-0, playing well in crucial moments and saving ten break points. Even though Jankovic lost her last three meetings with Wozniacki, the Serb said it was in her overall bad period, and now her motivation and confidence are much greater.

A rematch of the last year's final is also awaiting in the fourth round as Clijsters faces Li. Clijsters beat Daniela Hantuchova 6-3 6-2 in her third match of the tournament, while Li advanced when Anabel Medina Garrigues retired with an ankle sprain after only three games. In the 2011 title match Clijsters defeated Li 3-6 6-3 6-3, in what was a positive experience for both players and the two are excited to repeat the challenge.

Victoria Azarenka, who will play Iveta Benesova in the fourth round, faced a fresh first-time WTA titlist Mona Barthel and won the first set against her in just 31 minutes, hitting only three unforced errors. Barthel brought more resistance in the second set, but after four match points Azarenka defeated her 6-2 6-4.

Julia Goerges moved into the second week of a Grand Slam for the first time after overcoming Romina Oprandi 3-6 6-3 6-1, the Italian who upset tenth seed Francesca Schiavone in the second round. Next for Goerges is Agnieszka Radwanska, the 6-2 6-2 winner over Galina Voskoboeva.

The second set of third round matches awaits! (photo: Tidalist)

At a Polish website dedicated to style, the country's No.1 player Agnieszka Radwanska presented her modeling skills and talked about her early life, family and the way she handles money. Thanks to The Slice we have rough translations of several Radwanska's statements.

Even though the 22-year-old likes to pamper herself with a Louis Vuitton bag when she wins a tournament, she's not shy of wearing cheap clothes as well and the majority of what she earns is invested in more stable assets:

Money is primarily invested in real estate.

As for tennis, just like most WTA players, Radwanska has never known for anything else in her life:

There were difficult moments, but overall I was happy. Besides, I knew no other life, I never wondered if I could do something else. Read more »

A big tennis exhibition featuring six WTA stars (including two Top 10 members) took place on December 16-18 in Singapore and Italian Flavia Pennetta walked away with a victory bowl, defeating Poland's Agnieszka Radwanska in the final 6-4 7-5. Pennetta ended the tournament with a 3-0 win-loss record and besides the older Polish sister she defeated Daniela Hantuchova and 2011 US Open winner Samantha Stosur. Read more »

On Monday our guest poster and stats lover Omair dug us into the numbers of his detailed analysis about the number of wins year-end Top 10 players scored over Top 10 players in 2011 and their best tournaments. Now it's time for Part 2 and a different perspective – results of the Top 10 stars approached through their losses.

First have a look at the table showing average rank of players who defeated each of the year-end Top 10 players and the lowest-ranked player to beat year-end Top 10 players during 2011. 

Vera Zvonareva needs to be mentioned here for her consistency as she is the only one of the Top 10 who was not beaten by a player ranked outside Top 35, while the rest of her colleagues from this elite group were beaten at least twice. The lowest-ranked player to defeat Zvonareva during 2011 was Tsvetana Pironkova, ranked 33rd (seeded 32nd) during the third round of Wimbledon.

Of Zvonareva's 22 losses only three came at the hands of players ranked between 30 and 35 and interestingly they came at the hands of players ranked 31, 32, and 33. Also, a total of only three losses came at the hands of players ranked between 21 and 29, while the rest of 16 came at the hands of Top 20 players. Average rank of Zvonareva's conquerors was 15, while the average rank of the conquerors of all the remaining Top 10 players was not even within Top 20.

Victoria Azarenka also needs to be mentioned here, because only five of her 17 losses came at the hands of players ranked outside Top 20, and of those five losses two came at the hands of Serena Williams who had low ranking due to her health problems and lack of play. Average rank of Azarenka's conquerors in 2011 was 23.

Read more »

We can soon start calling our reader Omair a stats expert. After seeing his "Comparative analysis of Top 10 players and their performance at big tournaments in 2011" received so well, Omair eagerly rushed to thrill us with more analysis, this time focusing on the year-end Top 10 players and the ranking of opponents that they beat in 2011 (Part 1) and on the ranking of opponents that beat them (Part 2). Let the tables do the talking!

The table above shows the number of tournaments where a year-end Top 10 player defeated more than one Top 10 player. Petra Kvitova tops here with three tournaments, at two of which she defeated three or more Top 10 players en route to the title (Madrid and WTA Championships). World number one Caroline Wozniacki is the only Top 10 player who did not beat two Top 10 players in a single tournament.

Let's continue with tables showing tournaments won by each Top 10 player and tournaments where the player (though did not end up winning the event) ended up beating two or more Top 10 players.

Read more »

In the beginning of the year our loyal contributor John Bolan made a prediction of how Top 10 would look like at the end of the season and a lot of readers presented their Top 10 picks in the comments. Now that the tennis 2011 has ended, I thought it was perfect time to ask John to do a comparison of the prediction and the actual season-ending rankings. He was eager to accept my proposal. Continue reading to see the shocking changes over the last 11 months, such as Justine Henin and Dinara Safina not playing any more and Petra Kvitova, who was never even mentioned, joining the elite big time.

On January 8, 2011 the Women’s Tennis Blog published my article "Who will be Top 10 players at the end of 2011?".  My picks were listed with reasons why I chose them. Many fans used the comment section to submit their picks. Now that the year is over, let’s find out how we did.

Most of us only named about 5 out of the 10 Top finishers. The reason that we did so poorly was the injury factor. Five of the top players were injured for most of the year – Justin Henin, Kim Clijsters, Dinara Safina, Serena Williams and Venus Williams. Most of us had at least 3 of these injured stars on our Top 10 list. The most difficult factor in picking the Top 10 is trying to guess who will not be able to play a full season and 2011 was an unusual year with so many of the top stars injured for so long.

No one picked the number 2 finisher – Petra Kvitova. Only one person picked Marion Bartoli and only one picked Andrea Petkovic. These omissions hurt the overall accuracy of our picks. Read more »

This blog likes to give its faithful readers an opportunity to contribute and show their take on women's tennis, so here's Omair's analysis of our year-end Top 10 players and their 2011 results at Grand Slams, Premier tournaments and the WTA Championships. Have a look at what the numbers suggest.

Just to note, in the following tables CW is Caroline Wozniacki, PK is Petra Kvitova, VA is Victoria Azarenka, MS is Maria Sharapova, LN is Li Na, SS is Samantha Stosur, VZ is Vera Zvonareva, AR is Agnieszka Radwanska, MB is Marion Bartoli and AP is Andrea Petkovic.

WIN-LOSS RECORD OF THE YEAR-END TOP 10 PLAYERS AGAINST EACH OTHER IN 2011

The win-loss record is in itself self-explanatory, showing who has been the most dominant player - Petra Kvitova. Please also note the number of wins by a player against Top 5 players, especially for Top 5 players.

OVERALL WIN-LOSS RECORD IN 2011

Kvitova is not the leader only in the percentage of wins over fellow season-ending Top 10 players, but is also the leader in yearly win-loss record overall.

2011 GRAND SLAM WINS OF TOP 10 PLAYERS

Read more »