I’m blown away by the first result of the day which saw Simona Halep thrash Serena Williams, 6-0 6-2.  I was following on live scores with my mouth wide open for most of it.  In the meantime, here is the first preview for Thursday’s schedule; note that there will be three singles matches with the two matches from the white group and Serena Williams in action against Eugenie Bouchard in the evening.  Goodness knows what will happen in that match.  It seems rather obsolete to even give a prediction, but let’s focus on Caro-Aga for now…

Defence beat attack on Tuesday as Caroline Wozniacki and Agnieszka Radwanska both recorded wins to take an early lead in the white group standings.  Wozniacki produced a superb display to defeat Maria Sharapova with a 7-6(4) 6-7(5) 6-2 victory in three hours and 13 minutes.  Wozniacki didn’t hit many winners during the match, but all the wins she has gained during the summer have really brought her competitive instinct back.  When she was number one, Caroline was one of the best competitors on tour; I felt that this had started to fade away over the last couple of years, but she’s really come back to the party in the last couple of months.  Caroline’s fitness helped her come through the final set, winning the last four games of the match as Sharapova tired.

Radwanska was the underdog coming into this tournament, but she gave her chances of qualifying a huge boost with a 6-2 6-3 victory over Petra Kvitova.  Radwanska played an extremely smart match, keeping her error count low and getting a sluggish Petra on the run.  She was able to demonstrate her craft and wizardy with some delightful lobs and gorgeous play at the net.  In recent matches, Radwanska has made so many uncharacteristic errors, but against Kvitova, she was rock solid and kept forcing Petra to hit one more shot.  This was represented in the stats with Radwanska hitting 9 unforced errors to Kvitova’s 42.

This will be the 11th encounter between Wozniacki and Radwanska, but just their second in 2014.  In the quarter-finals of Cincy, Wozniacki snapped a three match losing streak against Radwanska to win, 6-4 7-6(5).  This will be a complete polar opposite to the match that will be played out between Kvitova and Sharapova, but should be equally entertaining and feature lots of gruelling rallies.  Despite her fitness, I do think the match with Sharapova will have taken a bit out of Caro.  In Asia, I thought she reverted ever so slightly back to defensive Caro and this may have been a knock-on effect from an exhausting summer. It’s a tough one to call because the H2H is close.  It normally comes down to who is in the better form; despite that excellent performance against Petra, I think Caroline is playing great and will have gained another confidence boost from beating Maria.  Caro for the win…

Prediction: Wozniacki d. Radwanska in 3 sets

Poll Result from Day 3: Congratulations to everyone who went for Simona in Wednesday’s first match!  35% of readers voted for Halep to beat Serena.