In yet another letdown in the final of a big tournament, Dinara Safina fell to Jelena Jankovic 6-4, 6-2 in the final of Cincinnati.  The match was hardly as close as the score would let on, with Jankovic in control from the get-go.

Jankovic's steady defense and counter-punching quickly undid Safina, who played nowhere near as well as she had against Flavia Pennetta in the semifinal.  Safina looked mentally out of it from the beginning, glaring at her coach Zeljko Krajan after seemingly every error, glaring at him until he finally complied by giving her some illegal coaching gesture.

Despite the dependence on her coach by illegal means, it was surprising how resistant Safina was to use her coach legally, not summoning him to the court until she trailed 3-0 in the second set.  Safina won the two games after Krajan's visit, but it was too little too late. 

Safina's reliance on her coach, a coach credited with her success in the last 16 months, is likely also keeping her from winning a slam.  While on-court coaching is allowed at WTA events, it isn't at the slams (and hopefully never will be). 

So until she learns to be more self-reliant, Safina isn't going to be hoisting any major hardware.  I would be curious to see how well she would be able to do if Krajan wasn't sitting courtside.  Would it free her or leave her completely lost? Probably will be a while before we ever find out.

Jankovic, on other hand, is a great thing for the women's game.  She is a hugely important player to have back near the top of the field heading into the US Open.  She embraces the spotlight none other, plays to the fans, and is dynamite in press conferences and interviews.  She still has the occasional excessive injury time out, but those seem more based out of hypochondria than any malicious intent to freeze up her opponent.

 With Jankovic officially in the mix (and now practically guaranteed the #4 seed), the Open has a defending finalist primed to go far again, one who in her last three trips to New York has lost in close matches in the second week to Venus, Serena, and Justine Henin.  Not a bad track record at all.

So welcome back, Jelena.  The sport is better off with you near the top.

Two matches that could both be pretty good (or that could both be blowouts), on the card for Sunday. 

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WTA Cincinnati coverage

For the second time this week, a battle of Eastern European women in Cincinnati ended by the score of 7-6, 0-6, 7-6.

#5 Jelena Jankovic was on the winning end of this one, defeating #4 Elena Dementieva in a match that lasted 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Jankovic had triple match point on her serve at 5-4, 40-0 in the third, but blew all three.  Dementieva then had quadruple match point at 6-2 in the third set tiebreak, but blew all four of those and then threw in a double fault for good measure, to give Jankovic the lead at 7-6 in the breaker, and her fourth match point, which she accidentally won to take the match.

As maligned as this match could be, it was nothing if not entertaining.  Painful and unimpressive, certainly, but always entertaining.  A match where it takes a big effort to hold serve is not inherently worse than a match in which it takes a big effort to break serve.  It's just a different style of competition.

Some stats to take away from this match for the ages:

• 25 total Double Faults (17 by Dementieva, 8 by Jankovic)
• 92 Total Unforced Errors (55 for Dementieva, 37 by Jankovic)
• 15 Breaks of Serve (9 by Dementieva, 6 by Jankovic)
• 7 Blown Match Points (4 by Dementieva, 3 by Jankovic)

Dinara Safina, on the other hand, won her semifinal vs. Flavia Pennetta running away, 6-2, 6-0, proving again that she can play like a real #1 on the medium-size stages.  Safina also had the advantage of having the afternoon match, so she'll have a huge advantage in terms of fatigue over Jankovic. 

Sunday's final could easily be a similar 14-game affair.

Two good looking match ups (Roddick vs. del Potro & Dementieva vs. Jankovic) on the card at the big ATP and WTA events Saturday, as well as two that should be fairly lopsided (Murray vs. Tsonga & Safina vs. Pennetta).

Any and all thoughts on the day's action as it rolls along can go right here in the comments.

Both Williams sisters went down in straight sets Thursday in third round action in Cincinnati, as the players battling for the WTA #1 continue to say "no, you take it" at tournament after tournament.

Serena Williams fell to unseeded Sybille Bammer 7-5, 6-4, making error after error as the Austrian did little to earn the straight sets victory.

"I never played worse in my life," Serena said after the match.  Serena is certainly prone to hyperbole, but she's also not misdiagnosing her play by much.  It was excruciating tennis to watch.

The only good news about this loss for Serena is that the last time she lost to Bammer (Hobart 2007), she then went on to win her next tournament, a little event known as the Australian Open.  A disgusted Serena is more often than not a driven Serena.

Venus didn't play especially well either, but her play was a lot more excusable in her 7-6, 6-4 loss to Flavia Pennetta.  In Flavia Pennetta Venus faced an opponent who has won two straight titles (Palermo and Los Angeles), as well as three of her previous six matches against the American #2.  Pennetta did a tremendous job of hanging with Williams in long rally after long rally, eventually drawing an error or opening up the court for a down the line winner.

With her win, Pennetta becomes the first Italian woman to ever make it into the top ten.  It's a surprising milestone, considering how many Italian women have been near the top of the game before.  Both Silvia Farina Elia and Francesca Schiavone peaked at #11, a plateau Pennetta too had reached previously in February. The gap between #11 and #10 is pretty superficial, but it's still an important milestone for Pennetta, who is looking like a better and better bet to defend her US Open quarterfinal points from last year.  In the next round Pennetta faces Daniela Hantuchova, who prevailed in a bizarre match over Vera Zvonareva (more on that later).

In the matches not involving a Williams, Kim Clijsters was the big story, defeating #6 Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-4, 4-6, 6-2 to make the quarterfinal of her first tournament in over two years.  Her quarterfinal is against Dinara Safina, in a match that will say a lot where both players' games are right now.

Jelena Jankovic had a real nice win over Victoria Azarenka in straight sets, 7-5, 7-6(4), her first win over a top ten opponent this year.  She'll face Bammer in her quarterfinal, a rematch of their US Open quarterfinal from last year.   Caroline Wozniacki only played three games before Melinda Czink retired, and will play Elena Dementieva in the quarterfinals.

I like Clijsters, Jankovic, Dementieva, and Pennetta to advance. 

What are your predictions?

In her first WTA match in 28 months, Kim Clijsters impressively defeated US Open series co-leader Marion Bartoli in the first round of Cincinnati, 6-4, 6-3.

Clijsters showed no rust early, racing out to a 4-0 lead before Bartoli could do anything.  Bartoli dug back in to get four games in the first, but Clijsters, despite a lack of match toughness, was better on the big points, and won the first 6-4.  Clijsters continued to play the big points better in the second, getting the one break she needed on the one break point she had, and successfully fending off all seven of Bartoli's break points.

Bartoli, who's last match was a stunning win over Venus Williams in the Stanford final, admitted afterwards that she was scared of playing Clijsters, and bemoaned her tough draw.  Not the mindset a hot player who just beat Venus Williams should have going into a match against a player who hasn't been in a draw in over two years.

Bartoli had been good but inconsistent, never follows up tourney wins well.  She has lost her last four first rounds the tournament after winning a title, a drought which speaks volumes about her streaky, hit-or-miss style of play.

Since she's so unconventional and streaky, beating Bartoli isn't a great indicator of how Clijsters will do against the rest of the WTA.  She faces Patty Schnyder in the second round, and would then presumably run into Svetlana Kuznetsova, then Dinara Safina.  Not an easy welcome mat of a draw, to be certain.

While the match was nowhere to be seen on the internet or American TV, it was apparently aired on TV in Belgium, as Belgians obviously care more about this Clijsters comeback than your average tennis fan.  I'm hoping to get my Belgian tennis-following friend to put up a FanPost recapping what he saw from Clijsters' game in her first match back, I'll be sure to highlight that if and when it happens.