Dear readers,

This is a short post aimed at helping out one of our faithful readers Emily and spreading the word about her new tennis blog called WTA Tour Insight. Emily is currently in the first year of studying journalism and for one of her assessments she had to create some sort of publication. Inspired by my work here at Women’s Tennis Blog, which she visits every day, Emily decided to make a blog about women’s tennis.

Emily’s goal is to keep readers up to date with the latest WTA news, including frequent score updates, and with off-court news. She’s planning to continue blogging after her studies are concluded.

Check out WTA Tour Insight and why not leave a comment or some sort of advice for Emily.

Good luck with your studies, Emily, and I hope I was helpful!

Best regards,

Marija

Dear readers,

Tennis season has no summer holidays but Women's Tennis Blog does haha and here's just a short note that posting will be slower in the next two weeks as I will be relaxing in the Greek sun. Yay! I got the vacation for free actually, and who could resist that!

Of course, I made sure not to leave you empty-handed, so I prepared a number of posts in advance. There will be no latest news apparently, but there will be some interesting stuff concerning women's tennis players.

All your emails and questions will be answered when I come back.

Kisses,

Marija

The WTA Tour has a new sponsor – a Chinese company called Peak that is not really known outside of the country. Peak will have a five-year deal with the Tour, worth seven figures annually. As of this summer, they will be the Tour's official shoe and apparel partner in Asia-Pacific.

Under the deal, Peak will receive licensing and merchandising rights to develop a co-branded WTA-Peak line of apparel; will become the official shoe and apparel partner of a series of Tour events in the Asia-Pacific region; will become a partner of the Tour’s China tennis festivals; and will develop a player apparel program.

The aim of the brand is to boost its image at home and attract the Chinese middle class which has a growing interest in leisure activities and plenty of pocket money, while the Tour aims to increase its exposure in the region. Peak wants to show Chinese people that national brands are just as cool as the foreign ones.

"Right now we're learning from Nike. We hope one day we can catch up and surpass Nike, of course that is our goal," said 33-year-old Peak CEO Jim Xu. "But we're different because we know China better than Nike, we have products that are better suited to the Chinese market … We can give consumers another choice."

PEAK stands for Passion, Evolution, Achievement and Knowledge. (source: The New York Times, WTA Tour)

Dear readers,

One more successful competition on Women's Tennis Blog has been concluded and I'm happy to announce that the winners of Anastasia's Yoga for Tennis DVDs are our regular readers and commentators Bróna and LuLinQa (randomly chosen). They will each get a set of three DVDs with yoga exercises specially selected for the needs of tennis players.

I hope that I will soon have an opportunity to organize another competition, and that those of you who still haven't been so lucky will have another chance.

A big thanks to all of you who participated, and of course to Anastasia for providing me with the DVDs for my readers.

Marija

Dear readers,

It's been awhile since our last competition on Women's Tennis Blog, and I'm glad to announce that the time has come for you to have a chance to win a nice prize again. This time yoga-for-tennis expert Anastasia provided us with two packages of three DVDs with her showing yoga exercises intended to improve your tennis game and your overall health. These exercises were featured in TENNIS Magazine and on Tennis Channel.

Two readers will be awarded with a set of three DVDs: 60-minute long Yoga for Great Tennis, 45-minute long Yoga for Tennis Elbow and 45-minute long Easy Power and Flexibility for Tennis. Read more »

Iveta Benesova of the Czech Republic avenged her first-round defeat to Simona Halep in Marbella with a 6-4 6-2 victory over the Romanian in the final of the Grand Prix de SAR La Princesse Lalla Meryem in Fes, Morocco.

The 27-year-old Benesova, seeded seventh at the African tournament, had lost an average of only five games per match until the semifinals, and reached the title match with a 6-3 4-6 7-5 win over Alize Cornet.

The 18-year-old qualifier Halep, who upset second seed Patty Schnyder in the quarterfinals, was playing only her third main draw on the Tour. She was a junior world No.1 and is now the youngest finalist on the Tour this season.

The world No.67 Benesova, last year ranked in the Top 30, is now 2-6 in Tour finals. Her first title came in Acapulco in 2004.

Explanation of the tournament’s long and a bit strange name: Princess Lalla Meryem is the first daughter and eldest child of the late King Hassan II of Morocco and sister of Mohammed VI, the current king of Morocco. And one more thing, the tournament, which is the only WTA event in Africa, has a ten-year tradition, but throughout that period it has been located in different Moroccan cities. (source: Sony Ericsson WTA Tour, photo: Ralf Reinecke)

Dear readers,

I would like to inform you that Women’s Tennis Blog will be changing the hosting company in the coming days which may cause the site to be down. So if you try to access the site and you find it unavailable, do know it is due to the works on changing the server.

I had to make this step because I’ve been having a lot of problems lately with my blog crashing too often, and I don’t even know the reason behind it. I will migrate to a completely new hosting company and I sincerely hope that the change will be for the better, that their service will be more reliable.

The transfer is a delicate process, so wish me luck that everything progresses fine.

All the best,

Marija

The Women’s Tennis Association and Sony Ericsson have extended their agreement to the end of 2012, but in a reduced form.

Sony Ericsson will lose its naming rights when the current six-year $88-million contract expires at the end of 2010, so the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour will get back to being simply the WTA Tour, and the prestigious season-ending Championships will not be called the Sony Ericsson Championships any more. Nevertheless, Sony Ericsson will continue to be the leading partner of the WTA Tour.

"To have that leverage, for us to have our own brand back will give us new opportunities to attract revenues. By getting some rights back we can grow further," said Stacey Allaster, CEO of the WTA Tour.

No financial details have been released, but media reports estimate the new sponsorship deal to be around $27 million for the nearly three-year period. (source: Reuters, photo: warrenski)

Dear readers,

I asked you to tell me something about yourselves, in the last days of 2009, while I was in China. I would really like to thank you for actively participating in the comments section and giving me and all the other readers an opportunity to meet you. Also, I would like to thank you for greatly supporting Women's Tennis Blog, and giving it all the praise there is.

We have learned that people from all over the globe visit this website. Practically all age groups are present here, and our readers are both people who play tennis, and those that only enjoy watching it.

As you presented yourselves, I should do so as well. Read more »

World No.1 and defending Australian Open champion Serena Williams tops the list of 32 seeds at the 2010 Australian Open.

The seedings follow the WTA rankings from numbers 1-15, then skip Yanina Wickmayer who has to qualify because her doping ban was lifted after the entry deadline, and hence every player ranked from No.17 onwards is seeded one spot higher than their ranking.

Here's the full list of women's seeds:

1. Serena Williams (USA)
2. Dinara Safina (RUS)
3. Svetlana Kuznetsova (RUS)
4. Caroline Wozniacki (DEN)
5. Elena Dementieva (RUS)
6. Venus Williams (USA)
7. Victoria Azarenka (BLR)
8. Jelena Jankovic (SRB)
9. Vera Zvonareva (RUS)
10. Agnieszka Radwanska (POL) Read more »