Toray Pan Pacific Open and the Guangzhou International Open

Well the Toray Pan Pacific has finished, congratuations to the winner Dinara Safina who has done so well this year.
Anyway the first quarter was led by Jelena Jankovic who swept confortably past Flavia Pennetta (boo). Anyway Na Li also sadly lost out here to Svetlana Kuznetsova. So it was Jankovic against Kuznetsova in the Quaterfinals. But this time it was Kuznetsova who survived a three set onslaught from Jankovic 2-6,7-5,7-5. On the other side with Daniela Hantuchova yet again posing little threat we all were guessing that Dementieva would be Kuznetsova's next opponent, but Srebotnik served an upset to make the Semifinals. Anna Chakvetadze also continued her unimpressive year by losing to Kaia Kanepi. Wildcard Amelie Mauresmo started strongly but was overwhelmed by Slovakia's Dominika Cibulkova (definitely a rising star). Anyway it was yet again Dinara Safina who came through here but she had a tough match against Chakvetadze conqueror Kaia Kanepi - good job Kaia!
The last section saw Maria Kirilenko fall to Marion Bartoli (I still don't like her) however it was Nadia Petrova who was looking to return to her former Top 10 position who beat the odds of Ivanovic (officially the worst No.1 of all time) and Radwanska. So 4 muscle clad players fought in Tokyo to win the Tier 1 title, though you could not be definite it was quite clear that the final would be a Russian affair.
In the end it was Svetlana against Dinara but it was Dinara who overwhelmed Svetlana winning 6-1,6-3! Another title for a star of 2008 Dinara Safina.
It was another Russian who won in neighbouring China beating three of the countries finest players, it was non other than Vera Zvonareva. Vera who has been having a good year was the lone Top 30 player in this draw. There was a score of Chinese players but by the Quaterfinals there were only 2 left - they were Jie Zheng and Shuai Peng. Though I was routing for Dulko I also wanted the chinese contigent to get somewhere so when Dulko lost out to Arantxa Rus (!) I decided to put my full efforts in cheering on the Chinese Pair. Jie Zheng played well and comfortably went passed the likes of Tamira Paszek whilst Shuai Peng had veteran Jill Craybas to ward off.
The next match for Jie Zheng was Vera Zvonareva - definitely the one to beat. But it was Vera who succeeded, however in the final Shuai Peng was hoping to capture her home title but her too did not succeed in this feat losing to Zvonareva in a topsy turvy 3 sets.