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Novak Djokovic, the #2 seed in Beijing, defeated eighth-seed Marin Cilic 6-2, 7-6(4) to win the China Open in Beijing to win his third title of 2009 (though it's tough to say that his Djokovic Open title in Belgrade should count).

A rain delay in the first set helped Cilic find his way back into the match, a match which he should have been able to extend to a third set.  Cilic served for the second set at 5-4 and again at 6-5, broken twice by Djokovic due to lose Cilic errors and a couple costly double faults.

While he didn't have to beat any top five opponents on his way to this title, this is a real nice title for Djokovic.  Starting around Cincinnati, Djokovic has had an incredible turnaround int he second half of this season.  He's won fourteen of his last sixteen matches, with the only two losses coming to Roger Federer in the finals of Cincinnati and semifinals of the US Open.

Djokovic is certainly trending up, reclaiming the #3 ranking from Andy Murray this week, and could even take Rafael Nadal's spot at #2 before all is said and done this year.  For a guy who had been generally considered to be in decline for most of this year, that's a pretty incredible possibility.

Never having fallen short of the finals in her three previous trips to Beijing, Svetlana Kuznetsova again made the finals in this bigger-than-ever edition of the China Open, this time winning her second title in the Chinese capital by the score of 6-2, 6-4 over Agnieszka Radwanska.

After losing a ridiculous six straight finals from late 2007 into 2008, Kuznetsova seems to have turned a corner this year, winning three of four finals and two of the biggest titles of her career.

While the lack of starpower in the final eight of the tournament  made the tournament a lot less interesting than it could have been, it's important to reiterate how big this tournament was in terms of points.  It is one of only four Premier Mandatory events on the year (along with Indian Wells, Miami, and Madrid), in the tier right under the Grand Slams.  Kuznetsova hasn't been winning events this big since 2006, and her rebirth and relative consistency this year is an intriguing and important development.

Even more intriguing and important is the gang sign Kuznetsova appears to be flashing in this picture (while simultaneously holding an enormously heavy-looking trophy with one hand).  Is that an "M" for Moscow, even though she's from St. Petersburg? An "M" for Mother Russia? An oddly oriented "3" for her third title of the year? Who knows.

Marin Cilic and his faux-hawk in Beijing. Photo via d.yimg.com

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Marin Cilic demolished top-seed Rafael Nadal in the Beijing semifinals, winning 6-1, 6-3 in a match that was exactly as close as the score indicates.

It's tough to know what to make of Marin Cilic these last few months.  I saw him play terribly in Washington, losing his first match there to Somdev Devvarman.  Then he makes the US Open quarterfinals, absolutely crushing Andy Murray along the way.  Then he loses a very winnable home Davis Cup match the next week to Tomas Berdych.  Then he absolutely demolishes the ATP #2 on his way to the biggest final of his career.

I guess the lesson to be learned is not to be too stunned if he crashes out of Shanghai next week in the first round.

For Nadal, a loss this lopsided is pretty unheard of.  People have blown him off the court before, but for him to win only four games seems like a new low.

I'd be happy for him to prove me wrong, but right now I'm definitely thinking that Nadal's days as a dominant player on all surfaces are behind him.

Serena Williams, #1.Photo via d.yimg.com

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After almost half-a-year of players and experts alike crying foul over the WTA ranking system, the undisputed best player in women's tennis is back on top of the charts.

Serena Williams will move into the #1 ranking on Monday for the fourth time, after beating Ekaterina Makarova 6-3, 6-2 in the second round of the China Open in Beijing.

But this really isn't about Serena.

It can probably be said that no one is happier to see Serena ascend to #1 than the player relinquishing the title.  Dinara Safina has been ranked #1 for 25 weeks (more than twice as long as Venus Williams has held the distinction), and has looked utterly miserable the entire time.  It was never her fault that the system ranked her #1, but Safina was made the object of criticism for months as a slamless #1.

Outside of making the French Open final and winning a few clay court warm-up tournaments shortly before that, Safina did little to justify her #1 ranking.  She made the semfiinals of Wimbledon, but once there won only one game in a mind-bogglingly lopsided drubbing at the hands of Venus Williams. 

Since losing the Cincinnati final to Jelena Jankovic, Safina had been utterly atrocious.  She struggled mightily and publicly against unworthy opponents at the US Open, finally losing to #81 Petra Kvitova after nearly losing twice before.

The nightmare only got worse as she moved on to Asia.  She lost in the first round of Tokyo to qualifier Kai-Chen Chang, then lost in the second round of Beijing yesterday to wild card Zhang Shuai, #226 in the WTA rankings.  Zhang became the worst-ranked player a WTA #1 had ever lost to, the last dubious distinction of Safina's reign at #1.  It's as if the nightmare had gotten so bad that the numbers finally decided to let her wake up.

Serena reclaiming the #1 ranking in no way means that the ranking system is in anyway more effective than it was during Safina's reign.  As they say, even a broken clock is occasionally right.  The calls to reform the system will likely die down, but they should be no less urgent.  Who knows who will be made into the next slamless #1 punching bag?

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They're more than a thousand miles apart, but Andy Roddick and Juan Martin del Potro played remarkably similar crappy tennis in their first matches of the Asian swing, as each lost his first match since the US Open to a qualifier.

Roddick looked bizarrely punchless against #143 Lukasz Kubot, letting Kubot dictate play from the start.  Kubot jumped out to a two-break, 3-0 lead to start the first set, and never looked back.  Roddick was far too passive throughout, playing the sort of unassertive baseline tennis that got him in so much trouble circa 2007.

After disposing of his first racquet, Roddick seemed to play somewhat more dialed-in tennis in the second set. But the punch still wasn't there, and Kubot broke for the fourth and fifth times to take the match in straight sets by the score of 6-2, 6-4.

Roddick's terrible statistics tell most of the story. He ended the match with a totally uncharacteristic five aces and four double faults.  Even more surprisingly, he won only 58% of points on his first serve, and only 28% on his second serve. 

Roddick should have been plenty ready for this match, having already won a round of doubles in Beijing yesterday with partner Mark Knowles.  But he completely laid an egg today.

#189 Edouard Roger-Vasselin, a French clay courter, was the qualifier to show top-seeded del Potro the door in Tokyo.  del Potro was a finalist in Tokyo last year, but didn't come anywhere near defending those points, losing 6-4, 6-4 in the first round.

del Potro's loss is arguably less surprising than Roddick's, since he's a known slow starter in tournaments.  I watched him nearly get knocked out of the first round of Washington by Yen-Hsun Lu just a couple months ago, as he came out of the gates slow after a long layoff.

del Potro probably has been too busy partying in Argentina to do much practicing since winning the US Open, which is totally understandable.  If he doesn't right the ship by Paris, though, there could be some cause for concern.

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In a second round China Open match that came down to guts and experience as much as it did tennis, Maria Sharapova came back to defeat ninth-seeded Victoria Azarenka 6-3, 6-7(4), 7-5. 

The match, which lasted just a minute shy of three hours, was full of wild momentum swings and drama, with both playing surprisingly high-quality tennis throughout, despite their go-for-broke, flat shots.

Azarenka appeared to have all the momentum through the end of the second set and into the third, climbing to a two-break, 5-2 lead as Sharapova made sarcastic remarks about Jelena Jankovic.

But Sharapova steeled herself as her younger opponent failed to seize the moment.  Sharapova reeled off five tough games in a row, including three breaks, to defeat Azarenka in front of an incredibly vocal, pro-Sharapova Chinese crowd.  After the respectful but largely silent crowds in Tokyo, the loud, packed stadiums in China have been a nice change.

Sharapova's serve didn't completely abandon her, but it was nowhere near as good as it had been in Tokyo.  She served eight double faults, including a couple on break points, but she compensated with thirteen aces and a first-serve percentage of 71%.

There's something intrinsically intriguing about the Sharapova-Azarenka match-up.  They're both Soviet blondes who make a lot of noise while smacking the crap out of the ball.  They're both unapologetic about on court behavior that leaves many with a bad taste in their mouth, while simultaneously being unassailable for their clear desires to win at any cost.  Both have been marketed heavily by Nike and others as "golden girls" (more Anna Kournikova than Bea Arthur, mind you), and both make more money off the court than they do on it. 

Of course the main difference between the two, aside from a slight age difference, is their results.  Sharapova is a former #1 and has three grand slam titles and seventeen other WTA titles to her name, while Azarenka only has three WTA titles to call her own, all of which she won this year.

If Azarenka can sustain her current trajectory, there should be a lot more great battles between these two.  The tennis played between the two may be loud, and it may be migraine-inducing, but it sure is entertaining.

To set the mood here for the China Open in Beijing this week, let's have a look back at  the most memorable match in the event's short history.  That distinction, in my mind, goes to the championship of the inaugural China Open in 2004, which pitted Serena Williams against Svetlana Kuznetsova, two players whose careers were headed in completely different directions at the time.

Svetlana Kuznetsova was skyrocketing.  She was by far the hottest player in tennis at the time, fresh off her completely unexpected US Open win earlier that month, having also won Bali the week in between the US Open and Beijing.  She was on a sixteen match win streak that included victories over Lindsay Davenport, Elena Dementieva, and Maria Sharapova.  Russians had won the last three majors, and Kuznetsova was being touted by many as the one of the three Russian grand slam champions (the other two being Anastasia Myskina and Sharapova) with the most potential to become an all-time great.

Serena Williams, on the other hand, was struggling in a way she hadn't in years.  She had failed to win a grand slam title in a year for he first time since 2001, after having won three in 2002 and two in 2003.  Her loss in the finals of Wimbledon to Maria Sharapova had taken away much of her air of invincibility, as Serena lost for the first time on a big stage to a member of a a much younger and comparably powerful generation.  The Wimbledon loss was followed by her controversial loss to Jennifer Capriati in the US Open quarterfinals, the match that eventually proved to be the impetus for the HawkEye challenge system.

You can watch the final chapter of the match below. Look out for a surprise gift, and listen to how the enthusiastic (but unfamiliar with traditional tennis etiquette) Chinese crowd makes all sorts of excited noise throughout the points.

Serena's win in Beijing put her back on the right, if only for a short time.  She made the finals of the Year-End Championships (a bizarre see-saw match vs. Sharapova), then won the next grand slam, the 2005 Australian Open. 

Kuznetsova, contrastingly, never regained the type of form she had in the fall of 2004.  She has won a few big titles since, but the confidence and consistency she played with at the age of nineteen has never returned.