At the Sony Ericsson competition this weekend in Miami, Eastern Europe had a bad time. Safina, Ivanovic, and Zvonareva all lost matches in the 3rd round and are out. All three of these women were in the top 10 seeds, but were just unable to outplay the other competitors. It’s kind of unfortunate for them because they have been able to win matches a lot more lately. The Eastern Europeans have become very dominant on the women’s side, mainly because it’s now a generation that was born or trained after the fall of the Eastern Bloc and now they have the ability and resources to really be properly trained for international competition. Next time around they will probably be able to battle it out after resting for the rest of the time in Miami.

Pete Sampras beat Patrick Rafter this weekend at the Del Mar Development Champions Cup tournament. Pete Sampras hasn’t been in the sport for about 10 years, but neither has Rafter. They play a little slower now that they are older and can’t move as much as before. They are still very talented, but they wouldn’t be able to compete all that well against younger competitors. For Rafter, this was his first foray into the Outback Champions Series and he performed quite well. All the players involved really enjoy the atmosphere, because it’s not as pressurized as the normal tournaments are. And the audience likes seeing good tennis, and they know about tennis, so it’s a good group of fans.

Rafael Nadal is still going strong. At the ATP event in Indian Wells, Nadal has been able to play well this year, ever since he came back from his knee injury. The problem is that he doesn’t really have as much competition that he might have otherwise had. Federer seems to be invisible with his back injury and he is, for the moment, stuck at #2 worldwide. But Nadal is keeping his case well in hand to remain in first position. It’s going to be an exciting year still, but without the Nadal Federer circus, it’s going to be a little quieter, it seems. We will, however, keep you completely up-to-date about all the events that happen.

Cetkovska beat Dementieva this week in the BNP Paribas Open. Dementieva seems to be upset that she even showed up at all. Perhaps she’s right though. After all, she has played a number of different matches over the beginning of the year here and maybe she just needs a break in order to get back on her game. Cetkovska was able to put a strong, aggressive plan into practice during the game and kept Dementieva off her stride. It was a fun competition. We were happy to see the newbie come into her own. But it’s also sad to see Dementieva in such a difficult situation. A little rest will probably bring her back, but at the press conference, she clearly was uninterested in answering questions about the battle.

The Croatian tennis association has been sanctioned and fined by the International Tennis association for having an overly fast court. The incident happened during the Davis Cup match that Croatia played against Brazil and it was a great match. But then the ITF realized that there was something wrong with the court and went back to do inspections of the court. The Croatian Tennis Association (DTS) claims that it’s not their fault, as the ITF inspected the court too late to fix it. The amount of the fine has not yet been disclosed, and the Brazilians want the system to be rethought so that they can regain their spot in the tournament. But ITF isn’t going to do that.

The Davis Cup matches in Malmö, Sweden was one of the more controversial ones of this season. Why? Sweden was playing against Israel in the competition and there were lots of European activists who dislike Israel. They tried to make a much bigger diversion from the tournament than they ended up with, because the police kept them at bay. But it seems like most people got the chance to make the statement they wanted to make and they could also  play the tournament properly. Israel won 3-2.

There’s an article on the tennis news site about Djokovic and his new racket. At the end of last season, he switched form Wilson to a Head racket and now says that it was probably the riskiest move of his career so far. His first outing with the racket wasn’t nearly as good as people had normally expected of him, but now is better than he was before. Besides his illness recently, we can see him performing quite well and winning much more than usual. He hasn’t won any championships yet, but we will absolutely keep an eye on him for an interesting kind of food.

Novak Djokovic may be out of a couple of upcoming tournaments. We haven’t been able to confirm this, and he’s played tricks like this before. He played very well in Dubai this last week and he has clearly entered the level of big name players in the game. He has had trouble with some of the main players, but he seems to have found quite a bit of the technique needed to really take on some of these great players. It’s going to be an interesting time these days, with so many of the big names in tennis out with injuries and illness. We’re getting to see the whole bunch of second tier players jump up and start taking titles here and there.