This week 12-19th October

In the WTA I found a highlight of the year and that was Flavia Pennetta getting to the final by beating Jelena Jankovic. As most of ou know Flavia is one of my favourite players, this meant so much to me as she isgetting better and better hopefully next year we'll see her in the Top 10. However Venus was the winner and good for her as she needs this win to get to the Year End whilst Flavia is unlikely to do so. Anyway what made my day early in the week was Flavia thrashing Nadia Petrova. Seeing Nadia lose like that ater such good form made me really happy (not because Nadia lost but because Flavia won). On the other side adly Na Li didn't do so well losing in the 1st round. However I was chearing for Victoria Azarenka after knowing Anna Chakvetadze was unlikely to pass the 2nd round. Victoria played so well that she got a double bagel as well as beating Mauresmo (losing only three games) sadly she retired against Medina Garrigues or I would have had the pleasure of seeing Pennetta against Azarenka.
Kirilenko did well however it was short lived. On the 4th section the most interesting was Ivanovic against Bartoli - both I don't like, it however shows that Ivanovic is better than Bartoli! But Ivanovic had such easy opponents that really she hasn't improved that much since the last tournament.
Murray winning in Madrid topped the week off to becoming one of my favourite weeks of tennis because Murray beat Federer and Nadal lost to Simon (reason because Simon isn't in the Top 10!) The only thing that was missing was Djokovic! If only Djokovic could have won his 3rd Masters Series this year! Anyway next year hopefully he'll get to No.2.
First quarter saw two Spaniards lead the way - the top two spaniards - but what was so exciting about this draw was that all the Top 30 were playing meaning whoever won must be the best player currently on tour on hard courts! Anyway Nadal had little trouble except for against Gulbis - sadly Gasquet didn't cause a problem for Nadal either. But in this section it was Lopez who got my attention (another Spaniard!) beating the top two seeds in that section however losing comprehensibely to Nadal.
The second section saw Djokovic sadly lose to Karlovic - a threat to any player. I would have loved to see Djokovic against Nadal but at least Simon (currently in my Bubbling Under list) beat Nadal. Dmitry Tursunov also suffered an early exit sadly. But Robby Ginepri also did me proud by beating the unstable Nikolay Davydenko. The third section saw 4 players that I liked face each other. In the end Monfils beat Roddick and Murray beat Cilic - besides Roddick beating Monfils there would be no better outcome for me than this one.
In the 4th section veterans Federer and Nalbandian were on hold (sadly Youzhny was not one of them!) and two youngsters Del Potro and Tsonga were targeting their every move - sadly Juan Monaco also lost early. Anyway Tsonga was unable to defeat the stalwart Federer but Del Potro managed to defeat fellow Argentinian Nalbandian. However Federer was too strong sadly for Del Potro - at least Murray did us proud!
Anyway as I said the only thing that would have made my day would be Djokovic getting at least to the Semis but seeing how difficult it was for him to beat Hanescu made me slightly worried about his chances for the Year End title.