Just like last year, Ana Ivanovic overshadowed her overall unsuccessful season, at least in the light of her form of three years ago, by winning the year-ending Commonwealth Bank Tournament of Champions in Bali. In addition, the Serb celebrated her 24th birthday on the joyous day.

Ivanovic reached the final with two victories in straight sets, against Roberta Vinci in the quarterfinals and Nadia Petrova in the semis. In the last match of the tournament, the focused Ivanovic defeated Anabel Medina Garrigues 6-3 6-0, losing just seven points in the second set, and awoke the hopes of a better 2012.

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Ana Ivanovic has a chance to celebrate her 24th birthday by defending her Bali title, having advanced to the final by defeating Nadia Petrova despite a set point against her in the second set. Her opponent in the title match will be Anabel Medina Garrigues whose second straight opponent retired from the match injured. Hopefully she will not bring bad luck to Ivanovic, who has already had an injury scare because of a fall in Bali quarterfinals. Read more »

Top seed Marion Bartoli retired with an ankle injury soon after the start of the third set of her opening match against Anabel Medina Garrigues at the Commonweath Bank Tournament of Champions in Bali. And that wasn't the only blow to the tournament on Friday. An earthquake hit the exotic island so much that the press conference had to be held outside the tournament facility. Luckily it happened after the matches were completed and spectators had already left.

"I’ve never done a press conference like this before," said Daniela Hantuchova who lost her quarterfinal to Sabine Lisicki 7-5 6-2. "It was quite frightening, but we seem to be okay." Read more »

Action began at the season-ending tournament of Bali, and unlike at the let's call it Premier season-ending tournament of Istanbul, the Bali eight-women draw doesn't have the round-robin format preceding the semifinals, but rather regular quarterfinals, semifinals and the title match. Therefore, after the first day of action we already have one semifinal pair: Ana Ivanovic and Nadia Petrova.

Ivanovic served up a 6-3 6-3 victory over Roberta Vinci, the player with whom she made cookies for charity as a pre-tournament activity to raise funds for UNICEF's education projects in Asia-Pacific. In her seventh career match with Vinci, defending champion Ivanovic was aggressive and played well. Read more »

Sabine Lisicki is relieving her jetlag in Bali by painting pottery which will be auctioned off for charity. In her blog for the WTA Tour, the German reveals that her parents are also in Bali. Lisicki's mother Elisabeth, a painting and ceramics artist, enjoyed doing art with her daughter, while father Richard was busy taking the pictures for Sabine’s Facebook page. Read more »

Now that the WTA Championships in Istanbul have come to a close, let's shift our attention to the Commonwealth Bank Tournament of Champions which is about to start on November 3 in Bali. The Tour actually announced the draw of the really-season-ending tournament on the day the much more important season-ending tournament commenced (how awkward is that?), but I decided to postpone the Bali talk until Istanbul finishes.

You know that in order to qualify for the event in exotic Bali you have to win an International-level WTA tournament in the ongoing season and not qualify for the WTA Championships in Istanbul which features the best eight singles players of the year. To make things even more complicated, Marion Bartoli did not qualify for Istanbul and was therefore eligible to play Bali, but as the first alternate in Istanbul she did eventually play the event because of Maria Sharapova's withdrawal. Nevertheless, Bartoli is still qualified to play Bali. Pretty messed up. But hey, let's see who's in. Read more »

In an interview before the BGL BNP Paribas Luxembourg Open, the tournament where Ana Ivanovic reached the second round with a 7-6(2) 6-4 win over Virginie Razzano, but lost her following match to Anne Keothavong 6-3 6-2, the 23-year-old said that she was still troubled by the back injury which started bothering her in Beijing, but she would not skip the tournaments finishing the season, including the Tournament of Champions in Bali where she’s a wildcard entry and defending champion.

In the mentioned interview Ivanovic stated she would continue to play despite the inflammation in her back, which had probably been present for some time but became evident during the China Open. The Serb said she would exercise caution with the injury and we can assume she didn't change her mind about traveling to Bali after today's loss to the 93rd-ranked Keothavong.

Britain's Keothavong recorded her biggest victory in terms of opponent's ranking by beating the former world No.1 Ivanovic, currently world No.23. The peculiarity of their encounter, their first career meeting, was also that Ivanovic's new coach, Nigel Sears, used to coach Keothavong. The Brit was open about the situation:

It felt a little weird too seeing someone who has helped me so much with my tennis over the years sitting in the opposition's box.

Sears was also discussed in the mentioned interview. Ivanovic has been satisfied with their collaboration, and they are working on improving her game with more structure and consistence. Her goal in 2012 will be to get back to Top 10 and win another Grand Slam. (via Beyond the Baseline, photo: © Neal Trousdale)

Ana Ivanovic asked for a wildcard for the Commonwealth Bank Tournament of Champions and the organizers were glad to make her the first wildcard pick. The Serb played the tournament last year and won the title in the final against Alisa Kleybanova, who is now battling a serious illness of Hodgkin's lymphoma.

The $600,000 Bali tournament gathers eight best performers of the season from International-level events. November 3-6 this year will see the third edition of the tournament. The inaugural Bali was won by Aravane Rezai. (photo: sr_cranks)

Ana Ivanovic had ups and downs during the 2010 season, but her clawing back to good form has reached its peak when she won the Generali Ladies Linz title three weeks ago and backed it up this weekend by winning the Commonwealth Bank Tournament of Champions in Bali.

To win the last tournament of the WTA calendar unseeded Ivanovic defeated third seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the quarters, Kimiko Date Krumm in the semis, and Alisa Kleybanova 6-2 7-6(5) in the final.

We can now safely say this season can be remembered as a good one when it comes to Ivanovic, even though in July she had her lowest ranking in five years at No.65. The end of the year was good for her, as she won 13 of her last 15 matches and the Bali title will bring her back into the Top 20, for the first time in a little bit over a year.

As for Kleybanova, she was looking for her third title of the year, which would at the same time have been her third career title and her third one in Asia. But despite the defeat in the final, the 21-year-old Russian’s 2010 was her career-best year. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

Former world No.1 Ana Ivanovic may have downgraded from playing Doha two years ago to playing the lower-rate Bali, but she’s on a good way to get back to the Top 20, being one win away from achieving that.

On the day of her 23th birthday, Ivanovic defeated Kimiko Date Krumm, the only player in the Bali field whom she wasn’t familiar with, and reached the final of the last tournament this season.

The 40-year-old Date Krumm won the first three games of the match and had double set point at 5-3, but Ivanovic then went on a six-game streak to win the first set and lead 2-0 in the second. Still, even though Ivanovic was serving for the match at 5-3 in the second set, Date Krumm managed to stay in there, forced a tiebreak and won it despite trailing at first. The third set was Ivanovic’s, as she broke her opponent in the first and seventh games to move into the final with a 7-5 6-7(5) 6-2 victory.

The other finalist is Alisa Kleybanova, who defeated Daniela Hantuchova 6-3 6-1 in the semis. Kleybanova was the one who took out defending champion Aravane Rezai in the previous round. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)