With her 6-4, 6-4 loss to Vera Zvonareva in the Doha final, No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki will enter Indian Wells with only a 95-point lead over No. 2 Kim Clijsters in the rankings. This means that beyond the first two rounds, all the Belgian has to do is go a round better than the Dane to regain the top spot. Wozniacki is defending 700 runner-up points at Indian Wells, which will come off when the tournament ends. Clijsters is only defending 80 points.—Matthew Cronin

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Mardy Fish, 29, said he took much of the early part of his career for granted.

“I went straight into the Top 20 at the age of 21 on my first full year on the tour,” said Fish, who will face Juan Martin del Potro in the semifinals of Delray Beach. “Maybe it came a bit too easily. Maybe I wasn’t as focused as I might have been. Now if there is one thing I am happiest about, it is my mental attitude. I suppose I have matured…Inconsistency has always been a problem throughout my career—you only need to look at the up-and-down graph of my ranking—but now as I see the years passing by, I really want to get out there and win the matches I should win.”—Matthew Cronin

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Spain’s Nicolas Almagro is just one win away from becoming the first player to win three of the four Latin American clay court tournaments in the same season when he faces David Ferrer in the final of Acapulco. Since the swing began in 2001, linking Santiago, Chile; Costa do Sauipe, Brazil; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Acapulco, Mexico; no player has won more than two titles in the one year. “It’s been an incredible South American swing for me and I hope I can finish brilliantly,” said Almagro, who has won nine career titles, all on clay, with five of those having come in Latin America.—Matthew Cronin

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DELRAY BEACH, Fla. (AP)—Juan Martin del Potro reached the finals of the Delray Beach International Tennis Championships with a 6-1, 7-5 win over second-seeded Mardy Fish on Saturday.

Del Potro, who only played three tournaments in 2010 because of a right-wrist injury, is playing in his first final since winning the 2009 U.S. Open. The Argentine reached the semifinals at San Jose and Memphis en route to playing at Delray Beach.

“It’s amazing for me, this comeback, and I’m trying to get better day by day,” Del Potro said. “I’m trying to play similar to 2009 but it is very tough. Tomorrow I’ll be in my first final in more than a year and that’s great for me.”

Sixth-seeded Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia, in the hunt for his first career title, will face Del Potro on Sunday. The 52nd-ranked Tipsarevic defeated Kei Nishikori of Japan 6-4, 6-4 in the semifinals to reach his third career final.

Del Potro played a flawless first set, but Fish started to take the pace off the ball and jumped out to a 4-1 lead in the second set. Del Potro, however, refused to surrender, breaking back to 4-4. Fish went ahead 5-4 on serve, but Del Potro won the final three games.

“He improved his game in the second set and he’s very dangerous,” Del Potro said. “I just became very focused on trying to break his serve.

“In the important moments I played better and that was the key for the match.”

Tipsarevic, who was a member of the winning 2010 Serbian Davis Cup team, has only dropped one set in four matches played this week.

“I’m really happy with the week and my match today,” he said. “There’s still one more match to go. I hope I can maintain the level that I played today, and all throughout the week.

The Serbian never dropped his serve to Nishikori. He took advantage of both break point opportunities—in the ninth game of the first set and the third game of the second set.

“I think the main difference is the serve,” Tipsarevic said. “I managed to win one or two points a service game with an ace or a winner, while Kei had to grind for every possible point on his service games.”

Tipsarevic is now 2-0 against the 66th-ranked Nishikori, who won the Delray Beach title in 2008. Tipsarevic beat Nishikori in the Chennai quarterfinals last month.

With her 6-4, 6-4 loss to Vera Zvonareva in the Doha final, No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki will enter Indian Wells with only a 95-point lead over No. 2 Kim Clijsters in the rankings. This means that beyond the first two rounds, all the Belgian has to do is go a round better than the Dane to regain the top spot. Wozniacki is defending 700 runner-up points at Indian Wells, which will come off when the tournament ends. Clijsters is only defending 80 points.—Matthew Cronin

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Mardy Fish, 29, said he took much of the early part of his career for granted.

“I went straight into the Top 20 at the age of 21 on my first full year on the tour,” said Fish, who will face Juan Martin del Potro in the semifinals of Delray Beach. “Maybe it came a bit too easily. Maybe I wasn’t as focused as I might have been. Now if there is one thing I am happiest about, it is my mental attitude. I suppose I have matured…Inconsistency has always been a problem throughout my career—you only need to look at the up-and-down graph of my ranking—but now as I see the years passing by, I really want to get out there and win the matches I should win.”—Matthew Cronin

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ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP)—Gisela Dulko of Argentina beat Arantxa Parra Santonja of Spain 6-3, 7-6 (5) on Saturday to win the Mexican Open clay-court tournament.

It was Dulko’s fourth WTA title. Parra Santonja has now played in two finals and is still seeking her first title.

The men’s final was set for later Saturday in the combined ATP/WTA tournament, with Nicolas Almagro of Spain to face countryman and defending champion David Ferrer.

Almagro is attempting to win his third straight ATP title following victories the last two weeks in Argentina and Brazil.

Almagro has won 13 straight matches and another ATP title would be his 10th — all on clay. He has lost all five previous matches against Ferrer.

DOHA, Qatar (AP)—Vera Zvonareva defeated top-ranked Caroline Wozniacki 6-4, 6-4 Saturday to win the Qatar Ladies Open final.

The third-ranked Russian earned her 11th career WTA title and first since a victory in Pattaya City a year ago.

“I was just going for my shots. Caroline is a great player,” Zvonareva said. “So I was just fighting for every point.”

Wozniacki was hoping to add the Doha title to the one she won in Dubai six days ago. But the Dane lost her serve in the first game, and lost momentum early. Zvonareva rallied from 0-40 down in the eighth game and eventually served out the set.

The second set followed a similar pattern with Wozniacki breaking in the second game, only to see Zvonareva break back in the next. After eight deuces in the seventh game, Zvonareva made the decisive break with a forehand winner.

Woznaicki hit wide to end the match, dropping her record in finals to 13-7.

“Not a great tournament in the end. But I’m happy to be here,” Wozniacki said. “Vera is playing a very good match. She played at a very high level. I had my chances, had quite a few break points. I didn’t convert.”

Zvonareva evened her record against Wozniacki to 4-4 in their sixth meeting in 10 months.

“I’m very excited at the moment,” she said. “It was definitely a special moment for me on the court.”

Rod Laver said that if you want to understand what Roger Federer does well, forget everything else and just watch his feet. To understand what Caroline Wozniacki and Vera Zvonareva do well, I like to watch their opponents’ faces.

We know both have variety in their games, and I’m convinced they have more power than they are given credit for. But perhaps most importantly, both have the underrated ability to drive an opponent unequivocally nuts. The opponent’s face is where you often see that.

In today’s Doha final, which Zvonareva won 6-4, 6-4, I likely missed the most telling expression—the one on Wozniacki’s face when she lost the first set. Zvonareva saw Wozniacki, and I saw Zvonareva. Which is how I know it must have been good. Wozniacki made her way to the net only to have Zvonareva hit yet another sweet lob over her backhand side. It dropped in, but not by much. Zvonareva looked over at Wozniacki, raised her hand (in apology?), looked back down and, as she walked to her chair, seemed to make a concerted effort not to look over again.

Chances are, what she saw on Wozniacki’s face was frustration and a few more unprintable emotions. Chances are, it’s because Zvonareva did a lot of what both are known for, but did it better and more often.

Zvonareva hit terrific passing shots, threw in lovely lobs, pulled out crafty drop shots—a few times all in the same point. She played defense as well as Wozniacki but had better offense today, as evidenced by the winner counts. Zvonareva hit 30 winners to Wozniacki’s 18. Both made roughly the same number of errors—25 and 24, respectively. Zvonareva didn’t serve as well as she did yesterday against Jelena Jankovic, when she channeled her inner Serena Williams and served up nine aces. But Wozniacki, for her part, didn’t play as aggressively as she did in her semi against Marion Bartoli. Still, this was a good match, with both players covering a lot of court to stay in points and using a lot of court to finish them.

It was their eight match in all, and third straight as No. 1 and No. 2 seeds. They’re now tied with four wins each. This win earned Zvonareva her 11th singles title and her first, surprisingly, in more than a year.

If I were Wozniacki’s biggest fan, I might want her going into the French Open with a mild flu, or at least a cough and cold. She wasn’t feeling so hot here, figuratively. “After my Dubai win, I’ve been under the weather,” she said on her blog. “I’m feeling sick, so I just relax in my room, drinking a lot of water and trying to get better for my matches.” That may explain why she continued the aggressive tennis she played in the Dubai final last weekend. Perhaps unable or unwilling to stay in points for a Wozniacki-esque duration of time, she went for more. “I had to go for my shots,” she said after her quarterfinal win against Flavia Pennetta. Perhaps that’s how her fans and casual watchers want her to feel all the time? During her match against Bartoli, it’s certainly what led commentators to pull out adjectives like “supreme” and “unstoppable.”

Wozniacki didn’t stop with the quotable quotes either. Consider her comments on what she’d do if she had to play herself (“I would put up the white flag and say, I don’t want to play”); Egypt (“I don’t think you can compare playing a tennis match to what’s going on at the moment”); and whether she “wanted to go out and crush” Bartoli after having lost to her a few times before this tournament (“Well, I don’t even know what to answer to that one”).

If I were Zvonareva’s biggest fan, with the next Slam just a few months away, I’d like her current position: Successful enough that she’s ranked No. 3, but not so successful, or perhaps not considered newsworthy enough, that she gets as much attention as the players trading the two spots above her. Not to go all Mies van der Rohe here (I’m from Chicago, so I’m allowed), but in women’s tennis, where pre-Slam attention is concerned, less is more.

—Bobby Chintapalli

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The main question going into the Dubai final between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic was this: Could the Serb maintain the superiority he displayed in a 7-6 (3), 7-5, 6-4 semifinal victory over the Swiss in last month’s Australian Open, a tournament he’d go on to win?

Following another decisive win Saturday, 6-3, 6-3, the answer is an unqualified yes.

Djokovic had dominated the rallies in Rod Laver Arena and there was early indication that things would he would do the same in the 5,000-seat Dubai Tennis Stadium. With Federer serving at 30-30 in the third game of the opening set, the players engaged in a long rally that ended with Federer hitting a forehand over the baseline. When he shanked a backhand wide on the next point, giving Djokovic the break and a 2-1 lead, it was an ominous sign for the world No. 2.

Djokovic had another break point in the next Federer service game but the Swiss held on, though not for long. Making good on 85 percent of his first serves and losing just three points with his first serve in the first set, Djokovic was solidly in control, wrapping up the set with another service break in the final game.

Federer’s finest moments came when he broke serve to lead 2-1 in the second set. Djokovic seemed tight and tired, coughing up backhand errors. But, as happened in the Australian Open, the longer the rallies lasted, the more likely Djokovic was to win points with the depth, power and consistency of his ground strokes. In the third game of the second set, a stat was shown indicating that Djokovic won 70 percent of rallies that went beyond six hits. Another telling stat: Djokovic forced Federer to hit his backhand 73 percent of the time. At the Aussie Open, it was 72 percent.

Djokovic, after falling behind 1-3 in the second set, ran of five games in a row, once winning 15 of 17 points as the match got to what the Brits call “the business end.” He was merciless in pounding Federer’s backhand, and the Swiss simply crumbled at the end.

Along with his victories over Federer in the U.S. and Aussie Open semifinals, Djokovic’s win in the Dubai final makes it clear that he is the de facto world No. 2. Djokovic is 12-0 in 2011 and is still riding the wave from Serbia’s Davis Cup triumph in December. He also seems firmly ensconced somewhere in Federer’s head.

A minor criticism of Djokovic would be his saying of “bravo” when Federer hit a forehand winner early in the second set. There was something patronizing about it, and he surely wouldn’t have done the same thing if the shoe was on the other foot and Federer was dominating.

Looking ahead, Djokovic is indisputably playing at a new level, but his breathing problems in hot, humid conditions could prove obstacles for him at upcoming events such as Indian Wells and Miami.

As for Federer, at least he didn’t get physically beaten in Dubai—all five of his matches ended in between an hour and 10 minutes and an hour and 15 minutes. Unfortunately for him, the last one went a little too fast and had a distinctly unfavorable outcome.

—Tom Tebbutt

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