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.

The recently crowned world number one women’s tennis player and the 2008 French Open champion Ana Ivanovic had to bite the dust very early at the All England championships and her lack of preparations on the grass courts showed in her second round game against 133 ranked Chinese player Zheng Jie. Ana Ivanovic did not take part in any of the grass court warm up tournaments and was visibly upset that see could not turn the tide when it mattered in the second round game. It may be noted that Maria Sharapova has also been ousted from the tournament and there is a possibility of Ana loosing her world number one title to either Jankovic or Svetlana Kuznetsova. Tickets to the quarter finals, semi finals and finals are currently on sale.