WTA Doha Preview

Tomorrow, the women's year-end championship tournament starts in Doha. This is going to be an interesting tournament, because a number of the big-name players aren't present: Maria Sharapova, Justine Henin, and both Williams sisters are not present. With the draws that we're seeing, combined with the odd sorts of form that the players involved have been exhibiting at the end of the year, this is really going to be a toss-up in terms of who comes out on top. It's also an open question as to what level of tennis we can expect this week. It should be interesting to see.

The first group, despite having Caroline Wozniacki, the current world number one, is arguably the weaker group. While she is an excellent player, "Sunshine" Wozniacki does not have a very good record against the other top players in the game, and those are the only ones she's going to be facing this week. Her group also has French Open champion Francesca Schiavone and Sam Stosur - who have pretty much sat out the second half of the season, considering their lack of results since the French Open. Stosur did look sharp at the U.S. Open, where she lost a match to Kim Clijsters in the quarters that she probably should have won, but neither one has ever played in the year-end championships before. The fourth player in that group is Elena Dementieva, who is appearing here for the 10th time, but her record here is abysmal, as she's gone 6-18. It's tough to pick out of this group - all four players have their reasons to choke, so I don't know if I can call who's going to come through.

On the other side, things are a bit tougher. Kim Clijsters is the only player to have won the year-end championships before, and she's done it twice! Vera Zvonareva, also in this group, has made it to the final before, which is something of an achievement. But Vera has shown she still has a tendency to choke in pressure situations, so it's tough to back her to go all the way. Jelena Jankovic has ended her year pretty poorly, as she hasn't even made the quarterfinals in any event since the French Open. The fourth player in this group, Victoria Azarenka, is something of a wildcard. She played some excellent tennis in winning the last tournament of the year, but she didn't have to play anyone of consequence on the way. She could make some noise, though.

I have no real sense of how this tournament could play out - I think it's just about as likely that we'll get an established player like Kim Clijsters tearing through her opponents and winning the title as a relatively undistinguished player showing her best stuff. It should be fun to watch in the meantime, but I can't make any predictions.