So many delightful upsets today, especially Safina and Zvonareva. Even the worst player in the top 20 Zheng won, schooling Alize Cornet in some fashion.

Someone else who considers Zheng to be the worst player in the top-twenty!
She's certianly better than Kanepi in my oppinion, and Medina-Garrigues (who was in the top-twenty a couple of weeks ago). And Going on the past twelve months Zheng is a better player than Schnyder too.
The Chinese players seem to be consistently under-rated for no other reason than that they are Chinese.
Who beat Vera Zvonareva?... Li Na.

I can't speak for Martin, but the reason I say Zheng is the worst player in the top twenty (which of course means she is still very good) is twofold:
1) A disproportionately high % of her points come from Grand Slams. For this reason, I'd say Carla Suarez is the most over- ranked player in the top 100. In recent past, players like Peer and Vaidisova have gotten artificial rankings boosts like this and we saw what happened to them.
2) She had a huge improvement in performance at an age where we don't expect to see huge improvements.
3) It has absolutely nothing to do with her ethnicity. I think Na Li is underrated because the rankings do a poor job of adjusting for players with injuries (that is, they do nothing at all to account for that).

That being said, you certainly could argue Schnyder because her age suggests she is due to slip. You have to give her credit for aging better than most, though? How many players were as good at 29 as they were at 24?

I agree on some of your points but just because she has improved at an age when most people don't (point 2) it doesn't mean she is a weak player, she has just developed later, and begun to focus more on singles now than in the past.
I wasn't particularly going along the ethnicity route. I was just saying that because the Chinese haven't produced many good players in the past people tend to seriously underestimate their players now, which shouldn't be the case. This issue was covered a few years back in Ace Tennis magazine when they interviewed Li Na.
I do agree to an extent with the rankings points for Slams, but at the end of the day, all the players are there to try and win a slam or become number 1 in the world, that is the main goal. Doing well at a slam should be well credited because it is the most high-level, high-pressure tier of the game today.

Zheng was ranked 27 in August 2006 but saw her rankings drop after injury and she'd being showing consistent improvement in her ranking every year prior to 2007. If anything she's continuing the path she'd been on prior to her injury.

Yes it can be looked at like that. Although I think she does have a slightly different perspective on what she wants to achieve now. She seems alot more focused on singles. So I think the rapid improvement is partly due to this.

Petrova has just been beaten by Makarova, so thats four top-ten ranked players losing so far today (and five over the course of two days including Jankovic). If it wasn't for the Williams' sisters I think the tournament organisers on the women's side would be slightly pissed.

With all the upsets and the lack of consistency amongst the top players, Kim Clijsters must be feeling better about her comeback by the day.

Someone else who considers Zheng to be the worst player in the top-twenty!
She's certianly better than Kanepi in my oppinion, and Medina-Garrigues (who was in the top-twenty a couple of weeks ago). And Going on the past twelve months Zheng is a better player than Schnyder too.
The Chinese players seem to be consistently under-rated for no other reason than that they are Chinese.
Who beat Vera Zvonareva?... Li Na. I'd really like to know whether sarcasm is such a strange thing for people from Britain, because this is not the first time someone from that country didn't recognize my attempt for it. When pmrd44 first wrote that Zheng was the worst top 20 player I didn't agree with him. That remark in my previous post was meant as a small dig at him.

Wohoo Daniela's down to play at Ponte Vedra Beach next week!



This is a good opportunity for Daniela to go on a good run as long as her draw is kind. She will be unseeded once again next week as it is a 32-draw as opposed to the 56-draw of the past at the Bausch and Lomb Championships in Amelia Island.
If she avoids Petrova, Wozniacki, Bartoli, Cibulkova, Schnyder (the top five seeds), Kirilenko, Stosur and Dokic in the first and second rounds, then I think she has a chance of a quarter-final. But obviously thats eight players named already so I think to go deep into this tournament she is going to need her biggest win of the year so far (probably a win over a top-twenty player). However, there are lots of players beneath Daniela on the entry list that she should beat (for example, Czink, Mayr, and Amanmuradova), so if she gets lucky in the earlier rounds then, as usual, anything is possible.
The problem of not being seeded is obviously a big problem though, in that she could quite easily find herself up against Wozniacki in the opening round.

That's a lot of people that we need Daniela to avoid lol!

Yes, I pointed that out in the following sentence. Daniela is at a stage where there are going to be far more potential threats in a draw than in past years (e.g. 2007).

Li Na is a set up against Serena Williams in their quarter-final. If she wins and goes through to the semi-finals then Dinara Safina will be the world number 1 on Monday.

Someone else who considers Zheng to be the worst player in the top-twenty!
She's certianly better than Kanepi in my oppinion, and Medina-Garrigues (who was in the top-twenty a couple of weeks ago). And Going on the past twelve months Zheng is a better player than Schnyder too.
The Chinese players seem to be consistently under-rated for no other reason than that they are Chinese.
Who beat Vera Zvonareva?... Li Na. I'd really like to know whether sarcasm is such a strange thing for people from Britain, because this is not the first time someone from that country didn't recognize my attempt for it. When pmrd44 first wrote that Zheng was the worst top 20 player I didn't agree with him. That remark in my previous post was meant as a small dig at him.

asj doesn't do irony.

Or maybe you guys don't always effectively convey what you mean? Does that seem possible?