End With a Bang

The women's tennis season officially wrapped up today as the final balls were hit at the Commonwealth Bank Tournament of Champions. And while the field contesting the title boasted some of the most impressive records on Tour, the ultimate outcome was probably not what many expected.

The top seeds in Bali were mostly occupied with some of the most successful athletes. Marion Bartoli just missed gaining full entry to the year-end championships held last week in Istanbul, but got in one round robin win as a wildcard. Sabine Lisicki came back from an injury-filled 2010 to take two titles and put up career-best showings at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. And twenty-eight year old Roberta Vinci put together her most trophy-filled year, capturing a career-best three crowns herself. But only Lisicki made it out of the first round, and a low back injury forced her to retire late in her semifinal match.

Taking advantage of the German's bad luck -- and, incidentally, Bartoli's a round earlier -- was Anabel Medina Garrigues, the surprise winner in both Estoril and Palermo. They were the first events she'd won since 2009 and helped her climb back into the top thirty. She's been a little quiet in the second half of the year, but by hanging in just a little longer than her opponents this weekend, she made her first final since July.

The bottom half of the draw had a few more surprises, but at least all the matches were fully played out. College Park champion Nadia Petrova, once ranked #3 in the world, avenged previous losses to second-seeded wildcard Shuai Peng this year, and defending titleist Ana Ivanovic reversed her recent losses to Vinci to score the win in just over an hour. The semifinal match on Saturday was similarly straightforward as the Serb got the better of her long-time rival, further improving her slight head-to-head lead over the Russian.

It was the first final Ivanovic had reached this year, and though she had dropped a few spots from her high ranking of 2011, she was nevertheless hanging with the big girls again. She'd beating Jelena Jankovic in Indian Wells and took Kim Clijsters to a third set tiebreak in Miami -- just a few weeks back in Beijing she beat both Svetlana Kuznetsova and Vera Zvonareva to make the semis. And she brought that momentum with her to Sunday's championship match, dominating her service games and breaking Medina Garrigues four times during the match. With the win, her only title of the year, she may not make a big move up the rankings, but she will at least gain confidence to play even better when she kicks of 2012.

And with the way her competition is playing these days, that confidence can only be to her advantage.

Bali High

Well it sure has been an interesting year for Ana Ivanovic.

After a second round loss at the Australian Open and a failure to come even close to repeating her run to the Indian Wells finals, the former world #1 dropped out of the top fifty for the first time in about five years. She had more than a couple public meltdowns on court, openly sobbing when she lost matches and seemed to lose some of the spunk that helped her win the 2008 French Open.

But a switch seemed to flip in the Serb sometime around the spring. She made a solid run to the semis in Rome, beating three seeded players along the way. She then followed up on two of those wins by downing Victoria Azarenka in Cincinnati and Elena Dementieva in Beijing before finally claiming the trophy in Linz, her first in two years.

Her efforts earned her an entry to the Tournament of Champions in Bali. Sort of a consolation prize for those who didn't quite qualify for the year-end championships in Doha, the event this year pitted six ladies who'd won crowns this year against a couple of wildcards who'd shown their strengths all year long. World #11 and Australian Open semifinalist Na Li and last year's titleist Aravane Rezai claimed the top two seeds, but it was the four unseeded players who made it to the final four. Ana faced off against veteran Kimiko Date Krumm while wildcard Daniela Hantuchova met Alisa Kleybanova.

In probably the closest match of the tournament, Ivanovic survived a nail-biter against Kimiko -- though she barely got half of her first serves in during the opening set, she won seventy-five percent of those attempts and finally scored a late break to get the early lead. She lost the second in a tiebreak, but didn't allow her opponent to get a look in the decider, winning all but four points on her own serve and securing her spot in the finals after nearly two-and-a-half hours of play.

There Ana met Kleybanova who had had a much easier time with Hantuchova in her semi, dropping only four games in the hour or so they played. The two had split their previous six meetings, though Ivanovic had beaten the Seoul and Kuala Lumpur champion in their two most recent bouts. In the final, just a day after her twenty-third birthday, Ivanovic got off to a good start, converting on two of her four break chances to get out ahead. Though the scoreline stayed a bit closer in the second, she raised the level of her serving, firing off six aces and ultimately winning, 7-5 in the breaker.



The win not only grants Ivanovic her second title of the year -- the most prolific she's been since that breakout year in 2008 -- but it gets her back in the top twenty. As of this morning, she's ranked seventeenth in the world, ahead of Rezai and Grand Slam champions Maria Sharapova and Svetlana Kuznetsova. Not a bad place to end a year which started off so shakily. With the momentum she's gained over the past month, and now well back into seeding territory, Ivanovic might even be a legitimate contender in Melbourne. She's made the finals there before and has shown that she's still able to beat some of the big guns -- with a few months off, who knows how much stronger she can get?

After all, she might not quite be at the top of her game, but she sure seems to be heading that way.

A French Revolution

It was a battle of the French this week in Bali, where the first ever Commonwealth Bank Tournament of Championships took place. The new tournament showcased the talent of new and established stars of the sport, inviting the ten highest-ranked women who'd won an international tournament this year -- and who didn't qualify for the season-ending championships in Doha -- plus two wild cards to compete for as much as a million dollars in prize money.

The headliners for the inaugural tournament didn't disappoint. Marion Bartoli and Sam Stosur claimed the top seeds while Sabine Lisicki, a finalist in Luxembourg and winner in Charleston, and veteran Kimiko Date Krumm accepted the final two spots. And right from the get-go there was quite a bit of drama to speak of. Two-time titlist Yanina Wickmayer voluntarily withdrew after word spread of her twelve-month suspension from the Tour (for not showing up for drug tests -- and in the week after Andre Agassi's confessions, it seems the authorities are just trying to make a point). Both Lisicki and Stosur were upset in their groups, and Bartoli was the only top seed to advance to the semis and ultimately to the finals.

There she met Aravane Rezai, the twenty-two year old who captured her first championship trophy when she beat Lucie Hradecka in Stasbourg last May. The rest of the year has been filled with ups and downs for her, though, as she lost a couple of tournaments in the early rounds and only barely qualified for Linz and Luxembourg to end the year. She'd lost her last two meetings with Bartoli, most recently in Tokyo this past September.

On Sunday afternoon in Bali, though, she fought her way back from being down set point at 3-5 to take the first 7-5. When Bartoli had to retire with a quadricep injury, Aravane held up the biggest trophy of her career thus far.



It's not quite enough to shoot Rezai into the top-most rankings, but it does make a case for French tennis on the women's Tour. The men already have Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, they have Gilles Simon and Gael Monfils. The women are struggling a bit with Amelie Mauresmo speaking of retirement and Virginie Razzano losing most of her matches against the top players.

But maybe with a little less than three months left before the first Grand Slam of next year, it might be time to start looking at another country to be a force on the courts.

By the way, the country you think is most likely to dominate in 2010, according to my admittedly unscientific poll, is Russia. Only one person voted for Belgium, something that shocked me. But even though the polls are closed, I still want to know what you think! Leave your comments below!