Shit, this sucks.

It's one of these matches where a few points make all the difference and if they'd gone Daniela's way then she'd have won, instead they went Safina's way so she won. Just having a quick look at the stats show it was a very close match, although Safina won more points overall and it looks like Safina's first serve was a big weapon for her as she 73% of first serve points for the match and 81% in the second set plus Safina had 6 aces. If only Daniela had been able to make more inroads into the Safina serve, then she'd have had a great chance to win. At the same time, give credit to Safina for serving as well as she did. It is so typical, or at least it seems so typical, that Safina has been lousy for the past year but she picks up her level against Daniela.

Daniela's stats for the match are fairly decent, she protected her second serve quite well winning 47%, she won half the break points she had. The worst thing is six DFs and no aces.

I wonder how much Daniela was affected by this injury. If she could have moved better she could have forced Safina to hit extra shots or hit closer to the lines and as Safina's form and confidence are still pretty fragile, Daniela could have gotten more errors from Safina and also be stronger for her own shots and be able to get into position a bit better. Of course, without seeing the match it is speculation.

This tournament is over so hopefully Daniela is fully fit for the US Open and that she can take away a good win over Kanepi and what seems like a decent performance against Safina. The important thing now is that Daniela gets healthy and that she's able to produce good tennis at the US Open.

The most positive thing about this match is that daniela held serve most of the time. I think there was one break each in the match. I think safina wanted to win just that little bit more today judging by the pics on getty. Hope daniela will get rid of the injury before next week.

So the US Open draw is done live today at 12 noon eastern time. That's 5pm UK time...

Obviously it would be very nice to avoid the dangerous floaters that we all know who...but the 3rd round opponent will be the most interesting.

Agnieszka Radwanska, Poland
Victoria Azarenka, Belarus
Svetlana Kuznetsova, Russia
Elena Dementieva, Russia
Marion Bartoli, France
Maria Sharapova, Russia
Yanina Wickmayer, Belgium
Shahar Peer, Israel

All of these 3rd round potenial opponents are gunna be tough, but obviously she has to reach the 3rd round first of all...

I think Wickmayer, Bartoli or Peer would be the best draw possible.

Conversely,Daniela picked really bad times to be broken-5 all in the first set(she'd have won the set otherwise),and handing back the break to Dinara at the start of the second set. There were a couple of marathon games where Daniela struggled to hold in the second set,and it probably isn't a stretch to say that the effort expended cost her dear in the tiebreaker.

But compared to her other matches during the series she held serve more often for this match, and Safina said both of them were serving well in her post match interview.

I don't really see how she can be satisfied with her US Open Series,difficult draws notwithstanding. I'm sure she had bigger ambitions than to go 4-5 over the summer.

It never rains but it pours-another horrid draw in NY. They say these things even out over the long-term-I reckon these means that Daniela should be enjoying some extraordinary luck in the near future!