Middle of the Week Tournament Updates.

In Doha, at the WTA Sony Ericsson Championships Serena Williams is rolling through her round robin grouping.  Serena ended the first round 3-0 defeating her sister Venus, Elena Dementieva, and Svetlana Kuznetsova.  Venus ended up going 1-2 with only a win over Kuznetsova.  Dementieva and Kuznetsova play tomorrow and if Dementieva wins she goes on to the next round as the 2nd place competitor in the maroon group.  If Kuznetsova wins there will be a 3-way tie for 2nd with Venus, Kuznetsova, and Dementieva all having a 1-2 record.  Which a tiebreaker will be used to determine who advances

The White grouping this week saw Dinara Safina retire from her match against Jelena Jankovic and then pull out of the tournament completely. Vera Zvonareva has taken Safina's spot in the tournament. Caroline Wozniacki leads the white group with a 2-0 record. Victoria Azarenka and Jelena Jankovic are both 1-1.  Vera Zvonareva inherits Safina's lone loss and a loss of her own and is at the bottom with a 0-2 record.
The round robin play ends on Friday.

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On the mens side its a little bit more cut and dry.  Each of the 3 tournaments are into the quarterfinal round.
Here are the quarterfinal matchups:

St. Petersburg, Russia
Denis Istomin vs. Marat Safin
Bjorn Phau vs. Sergiy Stakhovsky
Horacio Zeballos vs. Ernests Gulbis
Igor Kunitsyn vs. Victor Hanescu

If Safin can keep his shit together, he has a good chance at winning a tournament before retiring at the end of the year.  He can beat any of the players left. 

Vienna, Austria
Marin Cilic vs. Feliciano Lopez
Philipp Kohlschreiber vs. Nicolas Almagro
Janko Tipsarevic vs. Gael Monfils
Jurgen Melzer vs. Radek Stepanek

All these matchups have intriguing qualities.  Lopez is playing like he should and not just being a pansy.  Cilic is probably the best player of the bunch, but has been pushed in the early rounds.  Kohlschreiber can surprise people.  Janko is playing better tennis and Monfils is a nutjob with tons of talent.  And then you have the 2 grizzled gutsy veterans in Melzer and Stepanek.  I wonder how this all will shake out.

Lyon, France
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga vs. Arnaud Clement
Ivan Ljubicic vs. Florent Serra
Marc Gicquel vs. Michael Llodra
Julien Benneateau vs. Gilles Simon

The only non-Frenchman left in Lyon is Croation Ivan Ljubicic.  I like Tsonga to cruise to atleast the finals.  He'll probably face Gilles Simon.  Whole lot of Frenchman left in the draw.  They all can't possibly surrender.