Week #44 preview: Tournament of Champions (Bali), Fed Cup final

Tournament of Champions, Bali (INA), $600,000
A novelty of this season, the Tournament of Champions held in Bali will feature the 10 best ranked winners of International events plus 2 wildcards awarded to breakthrough youngster Sabine Lisicki (winner of a Premier event in Charleston) and veteran Kimiko Date-Krumm (winner at Seoul). The twelve players are grouped into 4 round-robin groups of 3 players, with the best player of each group progressing to the semifinals. Marion Bartoli, Samantha Stosur, Yanina Wickmayer and Sabine Lisicki are the top seeds and main favorites for the title.

A group: Marion Bartoli, Shahar Peer, Magdalena Rybarikova
B group: Yanina Wickmayer, Anabel Medina, Kimiko Date-Krumm
C group: Samantha Stosur, Maria Jose Martinez, Agnes Szavay
D group: Sabine Lisicki, Melinda Czink, Aravane Rezai

Fed Cup Final, Reggio Calabria (Italy)
The season ends also with the national teams competition (Fed Cup) final between Italy and USA. The Italian team is the favorite due to the good moment of their leaders Flavia Pennetta and Francesca Schiavone and the absences of the best american players, Serena and Venus Williams. Furthermore, they will count on the support of their home crowd and they are much better suited to clay surface than Americans. Nevertheless, the young American team led by Melanie Oudin and Alexa Glatch already upsetted Czech Republic on the semifinal and they have no pressure and nothing to lose.

Italy: Flavia Pennetta, Francesca Schiavone, Sara Errani, Roberta Vinci
USA: Melanie Oudin, Alexa Glatch, Vania King, Liezel Huber