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)

Millionaire athletes Caroline Wozniacki and Rory McIlroy have been dating for a couple of months and they like to share a portion of their relationship with the media. In August we witnessed a very public kiss and now Caroline is bragging on Twitter about a personalized golf club her golfer boyfriend gave her.

Is this a new trend, to make up a couple name? This couple is called Wozzilroy and Caroline is already using it on Twitter with a hashtag. Read more »

Caroline Wozniacki can remind us of her amazing number of titles and matches won, but that will do little to silence the ever-more-annoying yet understandable criticism of her occupying the number one ranking. In her first meeting with Serena Williams since she overtook the top ranking from the American, Wozniacki had a perfect opportunity to show that her defensive game works against everyone, but that was far from the truth. Instead, the Dane was humbled by Serena's intimidating first serve and power tennis, and will finish yet another season without a Grand Slam title.

Not long ago Serena was hospitalized for blood clots in her lungs and this US Open is only her sixth tournament after almost a year-long absence with injuries and health problems, but the 13-time Grand Slam champions needs no warmup – of those six tournaments she won two Premier-level titles and is now in the final of the US Open without dropping a set on the way. Her 11 aces in the semifinal, and 34 winners to Wozniacki's five, could only leave the Dane awe-struck.

Wozniacki is known for being strong and not letting the critics take away her pleasure in enjoying the top ranking and great win-loss record, and unfortunately, she will still need lots of good verbal defense after being blown away by Serena 6-2 6-4 in the US Open semifinals.

Serena's last obstacle to her fourth US Open trophy will be Samantha Stosur, who defeated surprise semifinalist Angelique Kerber 6-3 2-6 6-2. The 92-ranked Kerber started nervously but didn't let the semifinal finish straightforward, taking the second set from Stosur before permitting the Australian to take a 5-0 lead in the third set. The world No.10 Stosur, who had a rollercoaster ride to reach the semis, said that she realized her dream by reaching the final of the US Open, after twenty years of tennis career.

Stosur played the final of Roland Garros 2010 and lost it to Francesca Schiavone. Williams leads Stosur 4-2 in career meetings, and her most recent victory was this year in Toronto final. They met later at Cincinnati, but Stosur advanced with a walkover. (photos: © Neal Trousdale)

After two days of rain troubled the US Open organizers and fans, women's quarterfinals finally took place and we have our final four: Serena Williams, Caroline Wozniacki, Angelique Kerber and Samantha Stosur. Semifinals will be played on Saturday.

Serena Williams (28) vs. Caroline Wozniacki (1)

This semifinal will be especially interesting because it is an encounter of a supposed deserved No.1 and real No.1. Wozniacki has to win this one if she wants to prove all the doubters in her game wrong, this is a perfect opportunity to do so. Since Wozniacki overtook the top position in the rankings from Serena, the two haven't clashed, but in their last and only two meetings in 2009, Williams won.

Serena is yet to lose a set at the tournament. The quarterfinal with Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova featured six breaks of serve in the beginning before Serena got on track and in the 12th game broke the Russian to take the first set. In the second set Williams lost just three points on her serve and ended the match with her sixth ace. Final score: 7-5 6-1.

Wozniacki advanced with a 6-1 7-6(5) win over Andrea Petkovic. Wozniacki let a 5-3 lead in the second set slip and ended up playing a tiebreak, in which Petkovic made five unforced errors and spoiled the comeback.

Samantha Stosur (9) vs. Angelique Kerber

Read more »

Dear readers, Florian Meier from OnlineTennisInstruction.com is back to preview the US Open quarterfinals. One of his and actually the world's biggest favorites Maria Sharapova was eliminated early, but Serena Williams is still doing strong. Let's see what Florian's predictions look like now.

US Open quarterfinals preview: Serena still the tournament favorite

We are now at the quarterfinals stage of the tournament and Serena looks almost unbeatable to me at this point (join our poll to vote who has the best chance of shaking Serena's dominance this US Open). Let’s have a closer look at the upcoming quarterfinal match-ups.

CAROLINE WOZNIACKI versus ANDREA PETKOVIC

Wozniacki has had a really good draw so far in this tournament and to me she was not all that convincing in her victory against Svetlana Kuznetsova. I am not sure how strong her form actually is. She was down 4-1 in the second set against Kuznetsova who is also not in her best form at the moment.

Andrea Petkovic looked convincing in her last two matches but she has not faced any really strong players so far in this tournament. Petkovic is also playing with an injured knee but it seems to be holding up fine so far in the tournament. Wozniacki and Petkovic are 1-1 in their career matches. Petkovic won this year on a hard court in Miami and Wozniacki won on an indoor clay court in Stuttgart.
In order to beat Wozniacki you have to be able to get by her with some firepower and be patient enough to work the point a few times. I believe Petkovic has these capabilities. Andrea is fired up like I have never seen her before and I think she is also mentally ready to beat someone like Wozniacki in a Grand Slam quarterfinal.

Assuming that Petkovic’s knee holds up, I pick her as my favorite in a very close match.

Read more »

Top-ranked Caroline Wozniacki cruised through the first three rounds of the US Open losing only 12 games and now she’s in the quarterfinals after a 6-7(6) 7-5 6-1 victory over 2004 champion Svetlana Kuznetsova.

In the first set both players had their serves broken three times and even though Wozniacki was the first to lead in the tiebreaker, 5-2, Kuznetsova came out of the opening set victorious, despite her 31 unforced errors. In the second set Wozniacki came back from a 4-1 deficit to take the match to the third set, through which she cruised.

Kuznetsova actually finished the match with a total of 78 unforced errors to Wozniacki's 26. Of course, Kuznetsova hit more winners, 40 to her opponent's 20.

Wozniacki’s opponent in the quarterfinals will be tenth seed Andrea Petkovic who defeated Carla Suarez Navarro 6-1 6-4 in the fourth round.

Additional info: Wozniacki, as well as Maria Sharapova, are the first players to qualify for the TEB-BNP Paribas WTA Championships, to take place in Istanbul, Turkey. It will be Wozniacki's third straight year to play the elite year-end Championships, while Sharapova hadn't qualified since 2007. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)