Women's Asian Preview

It has been a nice year for women's tennis, with many younger stars emerging, and old ones still playing at high levels.  Azarenka and Radwanska won several tournaments early on but then Sharapova and Serena played at a high level, won majors and Olympic medals, and stole the spotlight.  The four majors are concluded but the tour moves to Asia for two last "Tier I" tournaments which will give the players one more say before heading to the year end championships in Istanbul 4 weeks from today.  First, the current standings in the WTA Race.

1) Victoria Azarenka (BLR) - 8686
2) Maria Sharapova (RUS) - 8190
3) Serena Williams (USA) - 7900
4) Agnieszka Radwanska (POL) - 6296
5) Petra Kvitova (CZE) - 5310
6) Angelique Kerber (GER) - 5080
7) Sara Errani (ITA) - 4820
8) Na Li (CHN) - 4152
9) Samantha Stosur (AUS) - 3571
10) Marion Bartoli (FRA) - 3345
11) Caroline Wozniacki (DEN) - 2905
Cibulkova, Ivanovic, Vinci, and Kirilenko are then bunched 2340-2445 ahead of Safarova with 2056.

So the top 7 seem to be locks to make Istanbul while it will take a nice run by Stosur, Bartoli, or Wozniacki to take Li's spot.  But there are still plenty of points up for grabs in Asia.  Also worth noting here is the top 13 women in the world are from different countries, with Italy the first nation to include two players working down.

Radwanksa is defending all the points in the next 2 weeks though those points aren't incorporated into the above numbers.

Tokyo - Radwanska def. Vera Zvonareva (RUS)
Beijing - Radwanska def. Andrea Petkovic (GER)

Interesting those two losing finalists have struggled with injury this year.

'11 semifinalists - Azarenka and Kvitova (Tokyo), Flavia Pennetta (ITA) and Monica Niculescu (ROU) - huh? (Beijing)
'11 quarterfinalists - Sharapova, Bartoli, Maria Kirilenko (RUS), Kaia Kanepi (EST) (Tokyo); Wozniacki, Ana Ivanovic (SRB), Kirilenko, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (RUS) (Beijing)

Women defending the big points at both tournaments:
-Radwanska (W/W)
-Kirilenko (QF/QF)

So hardly any women performed well at both tournaments, and several middling 10-20 type players did well at one or other of the tournaments.  It will be interesting to what happens this year.

I never did rundown the 2013 Davis Cup World Group matches, so now I'll shoot for doing that in October when those remaining relegation ties are contested.  But for now, here's a list of the matchups.
-Spain at Canada
-Croatia at Italy
-Serbia at Belgium
-Brazil at United States
-Israel at France
-Germany at Argentina
-Austria at Kazakhstan
-Czech Republic at Switzerland