Women's Tennis Blog is back from vacation. I spent more than two wonderful weeks in China and now it's time to resume posting. Thank you all for being so supportive and not minding the long break without women's tennis news here.

First of all, I would use this opportunity to once again thank all of you for voting for Women's Tennis Blog in 2009 Baseline Awards, as thanks to you my blog won the in the Best Tennis Blog category.

Secondly, I missed quite a few tennis events and stories during my time off, and I would like to do a little wrap-up of what happened while I was away. The Brisbane International and the ASB Classic are over and here's what happened there.

Brisbane saw an all-Belgian epic final, with Kim Clijsters defeating Justine Henin 6-3 4-6 7-6(6). En route to victory Clijsters saved two match points and wasted three.

Just after the Brisbane final, Henin withdrew from the Sydney International because of the left leg injury sustained in that title match. Henin wanted to make sure she was healthy for the upcoming Australian Open.

The other WTA tournament I skipped to cover was the ASB Classic in Auckland. The titlist at the event was Yanina Wickmayer who defeated top seed Flavia Pennetta 6-3 6-2 in the final. The victory was the best moment of Wickmayer’s career as she entered the Auckland draw after a court overturned a year's ban imposed by the Belgian doping authority.

The most exciting off-court piece of news is that Nike signed an eight-year, $70-million endorsement deal with Maria Sharapova. In addition, the Russian will be getting a percentage of sales from the line she'll help develop. Wow! And by the way, Sharapova beat Venus Williams 6-3 6-4 at an exhibition event in Thailand.

Feel free to mention in the comments some stories that I missed to write about that you find interesting. I would love you to enrich this post by your links and perspective on the past two weeks. (photos via Sony Ericsson WTA Tour)

Elena Dementieva beat fellow Russian Elena Vesnina 6-4 6-1 at the ASB Classic in Auckland to win her first title of 2009, and 12th in her career.

The top-seeded Dementieva had a slow start in her 25th Sony Ericsson WTA Tour singles final. The unseeded Vesnina broke Dementieva in the third game of the match and built triple break point in the fifth game, sitting on the verge of a 4-1 lead. But the more experienced Dementieva won five of the next six games, stole the first set from Vesnina, and then cruised through the second set.

Dementieva didn’t drop a single set en route to the trophy, although in her first match of the week against Chan Yung-Jan she did trail 5-1 in the first set.

This week in Auckland, the world No.76 Vesnina, who was playing her first singles final, scored her seventh career win over a Top 20 player, it was against Caroline Wozniacki, and surpassed $1 million in career prize money. (source: Sony Ericsson WTA Tour)

The final of the ASB Classic in Auckland will feature two Russians and two Elenas. It will be the 17th all-Russian singles final in Tour history. Elena Dementieva played eight of the previous 16, while Elena Vesnina appears in a singles final for the first time.

Top-seeded Dementieva advanced to the title match defeating last year's runner-up Aravane Rezai 6-2 6-2 in just over an hour. The other semifinal was a much tighter contest as unseeded players Vesnina and Anne Keothavong went toe-to-toe for just under three hours. Vesnina eventually won 67(3) 61 75.

The Auckland final will be only the second career meeting of Dementieva and Vesnina. Their first encounter was in 2006 and Dementieva won it 61 46 64. (source: Sony Ericsson WTA Tour, photos: vesnina-elena.com, Tennis Channel)

World No.11 Nadia Petrova has been hospitalized with viral meningitis, and won’t play the ASB Classic in New Zealand where she was supposed to start the 2009 tennis season.

"It’s a shame Nadia will not be coming, I know she was looking forward to playing the ASB Classic, but in this situation she is obviously in need of medical care and our thoughts go out to her," says ASB Classic tournament director Brenda Perry.

Besides the ASB Classic, Petrova might miss some other scheduled tournaments in Australia too.

In 2007, Petrova won two titles: Cincinnati and Quebec City. (source: On the Baseline, photo: Sony Ericsson WTA Tour)

Lindsay Davenport overcame Aravane Rezai in just 51 minutes to win ASB Classic in Auckland, New Zealand, her third title in four tournaments played since her comeback. The final score was 6-2 6-2.

The American returned to action in September after a year out to have her first child, son Jagger, and has since seen nothing but success winning 18 of her 19 matches, and adding titles from the Commonwealth Bank Tennis Classic, Bell Challenge, and now ASB Classic to her already impressive resume.

The former world number one, who was unseeded, did not face a single break point in the final against France’s world No.90 Rezai, who was looking for her first WTA Tour title.

Davenport's astonishing performance shows that she could be a major threat at the first Grand Slam of the season, the Australian Open, which starts January 14.

BTW: Davenport improved her percentage of wins in singles to 79.4 percent — 792 wins in 918 matches — the best winning percentage in WTA history. (sources: BBC, ESPN, photo via: WTA World)