After upsetting the very hot Yanina Wickmayer in the semifinal, unseeded Timea Bacsinszky pulled off another surprise by beating #6 seed Sabine Lisicki 6-2, 7-5 in the finals of the Luxembourg Open, winning her first career WTA title.

Timea Bacsinszky is definitely one of the most fun players out there.  When I saw her in the Bronx, she sort of danced out onto the court before the match wearing these enormous white headphones, which must have been uncomfortable with the enormous hoop earrings she was also wearing. 

With a flashy, agressive game and flashy, aggressive clothing, she is the clear heiress to Tatiana Golovin's recently vacated throne as the wild child of the WTA.  Here's hoping Timea can keep steadily moving up in the rankings into 2010.  If she keeps improving at this rate, it would be no surprise at all to see her in the second week of a slam or two next year.

Caroline Wozniacki has quickly established a reputation as the new Jelena Jankovic of the WTA here in 2009.  Not because of constant giggling or questionable injury timeouts, but because of the seemingly unstoppable need to enter as many tournaments as physically possible.  This week Wozniacki found herself as the top seed in Luxembourg, her twenty-fifth tournament of the year.  For perspective, that's ten more tournaments than #1 Serena Williams has entered.

Playing consecutive weeks in Osaka and Luxembourg,which are some 5,800 miles apart according to Google Earth, is an especially absurd idea (though admittedly not as absurd as Jankovic's 2007 Stuttgart-Bangkok-Zurich back-to-back-to-back). 

What makes the idea even more ridiculous is that Wozniacki has already safely qualified for the Year-End Championships in Doha next week, the importance of which dwarfs Luxembourg the way just about everything dwarfs Luxembourg.  For her to risk injury and guarantee fatigue by forcing this small indoor event at Luxembourg into her schedule makes no sense whatsoever, and it was a bad idea from the beginning.

The idea looked even worse when Wozniacki pulled up with a hamstring strain ten games into her first round match in Luxembourg.  After receiving some treatment for the injury, Wozniacki reeled off the next five games against her opponent, Luxembourg's own Anne Kremer. 

Wozniacki then asked for her father/coach, Piotr, who advised her in Polish to win the next two games and then retire, to "let them have some joy" in Luxembourg with a hometown "winner.  Poliphones watching this exchange online immediately placed massive wagers on Kremer through Betfair and other online betting sites, winning big as the odds for Kremer to win were at their longest.

After the match, Wozniacki admitted she would have been able to finish the match despite her injury, but said that she did not think she would be able to compete in the second round.  Fair enough.  But she also throws in a line about letting the Luxembourger Kremer "win" because "she's also [playing] at home," which seems like a strange justification for "extra sportsmanship."  To have it in the back of your mind that the Luxembourg crowd likes the Luxembourger is one thing, but to admit to quitting a match to keep her in the tournament is a whole different level.

Hopefully this partial match teaches Wozniacki some lessons she can learn from in planning her 2010 schedule.  Now that she's a top five player for the foreseeable future, she has no choice but to be a lot more judicious with her itinerary.