Caroline Wozniacki’s successful golfer boyfriend Rory McIlroy on Friday announced a split with his long-time manager Chubby Chandler.

The manager, admitting his hurt, thinks that McIlroy's love partner could have influenced the shock decision:

I don’t know whether it was his  girlfriend (world No. 1 tennis player Caroline Wozniacki) getting in his ear or someone else but I thought we were doing a pretty good job, to be honest, and I think that’s how the outside world saw it.

Rory and Wozniacki have been dating since summer. Rory has been supportive of his lady and now he is in Istanbul, where Wozniacki is playing the season-ending WTA Championships. (source Daily Mail via Beyond the Baseline, photo: sr_cranks)

The 2011 TEB BNP Paribas WTA Championships in Istanbul start tomorrow, not affected by the devastating earthquake that killed around 270 people in Turkey. Players and the Tour expressed their condolences, but their job is calling them to focus on the big task ahead.

Since only the most successful eight players of the season are in the competition, it is not entirely reasonable to talk about the toughness of the draw, but we can always speculate: is the world No.1 the favorite, or the most-established players, or the late season bloomers, or someone else? Let’s analyze the two round-robin groups.

RED GROUP: Caroline Wozniacki, Petra Kvitova, Vera Zvonareva, Agnieszka Radwanska

The tournament will start with the clash between Kvitova and Zvonareva. Kvitova is making her debut at the WTA Championships, but at this year’s Wimbledon she showed she doesn’t shy away at grand stages. Also, the Czech is fresh off a WTA title in Linz.

Another first-time qualifier, Agnieszka Radwanska, is also in action on the first day, against world No.1 Caroline Wozniacki. Radwanska is the hottest player this fall, having won 11 of her last 12 matches, including Premier-level titles in Tokyo and Beijing. Zvonareva was runner-up in Tokyo, while Wozniacki had the worst results of the group this fall, losing in the third round of Tokyo and the quarterfinals of Beijing.

To give you a deeper insight into the mutual relationships of the players, here are their head-to-head statistics, with this year's records in brackets. Read more »

Danish Caroline Wozniacki and Slovakian Dominika Cibulkova will play an exhibition match in the Slovakian capital Bratislava on November 21, 2011. Besides the WTA stars, two men's tennis veterans Henri Leconte and Mansour Bahrami will also take part.

Wozniacki and Cibulkova will first play against each other and then team up against Leconte and Mansour in doubles.

Cibulkova is now in the semifinals of the Generali Ladies Linz, where she will face Lucie Safarova. Wozniacki is not competing at the moment, she's preparing for the year-end Championships in Istanbul.

France's Henri Leconte was a Roland Garros singles finalist in 1988, and won the doubles title at the tournament in 1984. He held the singles ranking of No.5 and won nine career singles and ten doubles titles.

Mansour Bahrami was born in Iran and he went through a lot to become a tennis player, including going through a three-year period when all tennis courts in his country were closed down. (via Tennis Notebook, photos: Johan Rivera)

When China Open defending champion Caroline Wozniacki took the first set from Flavia Pennetta 6-3, the Dane looked to be on a good way to progress to the semifinals, but the Italian fired back by bageling Wozniacki in the second set. After just 20 minutes into the decider, Wozniacki found herself trailing 4-1. Later she had her chances and was two points away from victory leading 6-5, but Pennetta won the game and the subsequent tiebreaker.

Pennetta had lost all five of their previous encounters.

The 3-6 6-0 7-6(2) win over the world No.1, who’s occupied the position for a year now, booked Pennetta a clash with No.11 seed Agnieszka Radwanska, whose opponent, Ana Ivanovic, retired.

Ana Ivanovic recorded three solid victories en route to the China Open quarterfinals, against Kimiko Date-Krumm, Svetlana Kuznetsova, and Vera Zvonareva, having lost just ten games to reach the final eight, but a left low back injury sustained in Tokyo last week forced her to retire in the second set against Radwanska and the Pole is through to the semis.

"I have been doing lots of treatments on it, but it hasn't been really getting much better," said Ivanovic about the injury due to which she left the tournament while trailing 6-3 3-2.

Radwanska had a milestone victory last week at the Toray Pan Pacific Open. (photos: sr_cranks)

Except for the week of February 13, 2011, when Kim Clijsters interrupted her reign, Caroline Wozniacki has occupied the top spot of the WTA rankings for a year now and during the China Open the Tour presented the Dane with a cake to celebrate the anniversary.

On October 11, 2010, Wozniacki overtook the No.1 position from Serena Williams and spent 18 successive weeks there, and after Kim Clijsters' brief interruption, Wozniacki has been on the top for her 33rd straight week. Overall, it's her 51st week which makes her the ninth in the history of No.1 ranking occupants.

Of active players only Serena Williams is ranked better in the list with 123 weeks spent as No.1, while Dinara Safina, Kim Clijsters, Jelena Jankovic, Maria Sharapova, Ana Ivanovic and Venus Williams are all below Wozniacki. (photo via Tennis Forum)