Serena Williams has said that when she has finished with the tennis Doha she is off to Africa to open a school in Africa. The US Open winner has restritced her schedule this year to telling effect while rivals like Maria Sharapova and Ana Ivanovic have seen their success disappear in a spate of minor injuries. She skipped the Moscow tournament pleading injury but was pictured surfing on the beach at Hawii with boyfriend rapper and actor Common, born Lonnie Rashid Lynn.  Serena plays Venus this afternoon in what could be a key game. On balance Serena has looked the stronger. Get the Doha tennis betting here

“Of course, it’s tough,” Zvonareva said. “But I played here earlier this year and it was very, very windy and I made it to the final. So I would say I don’t mind the wind.”

There were also further injury concerns over Ana Ivanovic in her match against  current world No. 1, Jelena Jankovic. Ivanovic, who leas 6-1 in games between the two,  struggled from the beginning against the tour’s most consistent performer. Her big forehand, which usually anchors the aggressive nature of her game, never tamed the wind, and errors flowed freely

Clawing back from 1-3 to 3-3 in the second set offered a brief glimpse of a comeback, but when Ivanovic called for the trainer it was clear she had physical problems as well. Jankovic was ruthless and broke again to win 6-3, 6-4.

Venus Williams fought off a stirring start from Dinara Safina, who was leading 5-2 before succumbing  7-5, 6-3.

This event, as with the Shanghai Masters for men next week, operates on a different format to othert tournaments, with players grouped together and the top two in each group go through to the semi finals.

The chap in the middle with the smile on his face is Qatar tennis President Abdulrahman Al Shathri, as the western angels gather in the desert for the showdown for €4.6million being respectful, although not overly to Mulsim traditions of dress - three out of eight showing knees,  two out of eight shoulders and modestly at least four cleavages, Respect comes more obviously from the Williams sisters.

Get live tennis betting from Doha and all the odds here

Qatar has prided itself on organising big events, and its success in long range administration in Berlin got it the venue slot when Madrid passed up. Officially tennis was “introduced” in 1987 and has been husbanded through schools and clubs. Women’s sport and sport in general are actively encouraged by the government and they have had notable success in handball. The Khalifa International Tennis Complex has been upgraded for the event and seats 7,000 spectactors. A local tournament to encourage players saw more than 400 taking part this week.Their prize money pot was just $54,000

Serena Williams is clear favourite with sister Venus will down the betting in fifth place. But it looks like a wide open tournament with any one of six girls looking likely.

Get all the odds here

There is not much money at the bottom of tennis, but at this elite level the players have become masters of their financial universe. And for once a Brit could come out on top. Andy Murray, after more than a decade of scrubbing along from tournament to tournament, finds himself realistically elevated into the rich court of king tennis. Arise, young Scot you are now a rich man. You may become richer. You will become richer.

The money that washes through modern tennis is as unfairly distributed as a feudal fiefdom. The few at the very peak of the game, say the top 20, are rewarded beyond the realms of reason, even beyond the realms that other sportsmen in other fields can aspire, even Premier League footballers. Even Hollywood actors who at least have the vindication of genuine global audiences. Beyond the prize money is the endorsement and the appearance money and the brand representation and even a self standing clothes or sports brand.

Reality and tennis have almost seperated. It lives in a virtual world of virtual TV audiences in virtual satellite minority stations pumped full of brand advertising. There are 20 media stations built into the stadium but how big are these audiences? Tiny compared to other sports, and yet tennis has ingratiated itself as a means of filling prime time TV cheaply.

When Murray and the other players step off the plain as supreme global athletes what would the ordinary Chinaman in the street make of these aliens from another culture, another world. In China tennis is not even a major sport compared to the egalitarian table tennis. Eight men, hardly even that really, just big teenagers, twenty-one-somethings,  probably all white, probably all taller than usual to compete for millions in a country where the average wage is £40 a week. And they might wonder after all the fuss of the Olympics why are they doing it again? Why are these young children being feted like old style Tibetan gods?  They worship a racket and ball?

Tickets were £24 each so even if it is a full house (as presumably the Chinese will ensure) it could be said to break even as an event itself, just. There are 15,000 centre court seats, viewing from a gallery for another 12,000 and space for 3,000 VIPs in deluxe skyboxes.

The Paris invitations confirm starkly that no one country or part of the world has really been able to develop a widespread, long term tennis culture that produces top players on a regular basis generation to generation. It almost illustrates the reverse in the case of Australia which was once a notable powerhouse but now nobody is in at all.

There were times in the final where Andy Murray looked so relaxed he might have been knocking up. Occassionally Gilles Simon threatend a flash of brilliance that might undo him. For the most part Murray jogged through the final, upping the stakes as and when he needed to. His serve has developed since the summer being consistent and faster and - dare one mention it - will improve his chances at the grass of Wimbledon. The first set ran away from Simon with Murray happy to bash everything back from the baseline. It was not great to watch, but it was solid. It was too predictable and all the surprises came from Murray, who is getting a reputation on the circuit as a tactician. Simon came out for the second set like he wanted to mix things up and even tried a bit more serve and volley. What looked like it might be a walkover got more tense as the set went with serve. The tension ratcheted up another notch in the tiebreak where Murray twice had to come fromt behind. But in the end it was a resounding victory and the betting for next year’s Wimbledon with Murray now 7/1 and Simon at 99/1 seemed a reasonable assessment. Next up is Paris, then Shanghai.

Barack Obama may be the most visible of black men on the planet these days, but should he achieve his goals he will find that the high ground in the American and even world psyche has already been snatched from him by two twenty somethings from a Los Anegeles slum. They are the American dream.

Old footballers used to aspire to owning a pub; old cricketers to after dinner speaking; ex tennis players to bashing a few balls at a holiday resort club, (Sue Barker, excepted who apart from being a BBC presenter, is also now a trained GP) but the Williams sisters have harnessed the millions of sponsorship money pouring into the global tennis game into something cogent and tangible. Serena gave $100 for every ace she served to victims of Hurricane Katrina. The list of causes they support is long. On one campaign for sick children the pair played each other to raise $400,000.

It is a pantheon of modern black culture that might trace its roots back to the youthful Cassius Clay’s struggle to be recognised as Mohammed Ali; to Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s raised black glove protests at the Mexico Olympics in 1968, to those Marvin Gaye lines “a change is gonna come”.  The result is these two brilliant athletes, enthused by their sport, by their country and by their own femininity.

Where other black icons may have been tainted and compromised in the struggle for black equality, the Williams sisters have probably already sealed a unique status. Short of doing an OJ Simpson – and perhaps not even that – their reputations are sacrosanct. Even the plaudits seem to shrink in the face their achievements and fame. In 2001 America Ladies Home Journal cited Venus as one of the 30 most powerful Ladies in the USA. You could say that rather like a Grand Slam, Venus has probably won that one by now.

And in the media bubble that is modern tennis, they move, slowly, deliberately into the realms of fashion both as models and also designers will surely ensure their continued transfer from brilliant young athletes into mainstream USA business and respectable wealth. In other examples perhaps even into politics although unless North Korea’s Kim Jong-il or Iran’s President Ahmadinejad are thinking of taking up tennis, perhaps not? Venus to be the first black woman president? This is after all America we are talking about.

No matter, they have already achieved greatness and don’t need to be knocking on doors.  Yet the conundrum of tennis is that despite the fame, despite being in the richest country in the world, despite the climate, despite being such icons, their legacy has not  truly transferred into the ghettos to bring out a generation of other American tennis stars.

In 2003 their personal fortunes was then estimated at £200million. At age 26 and 28, even with the credit crunch that figure can probably be quintupled.

They came from the crime ridden suburb of Los Angeles known as Compton, where their elder half-sister nurse Yetunde was shot dead five years ago in a drive-by killing - the single horrific note of tragedy in the family.

Ironically, sadly their father Richard had been quoted as saying that he wanted to live in Compton because it was rough and would give the girls the kind of ghetto toughness they might need to become champions. Those fanciful often quoted sound bites about how the young girls practised to the sound of gunfire in their neighbourhood, ring that much more emptily now. But it was the children he fathered with Yetunde’s mother Oracene that were destined for tennis greatness led by elder sister Venus and the move to Florida, albeit Yetunde was herself said to be a more than capable player.

Venus has other businesses now, a sportswear label called EleVen; an interior design business V Starr Interiors. They are photographed with legendary Vogue editor Anna Wintour.

Serena is getting sassy. Her photograph on the web site has her flanked by hunks, some half naked. Another banner has her subtly pictured twice, her image transferred left to right, a T shirt emblazoned with the word ATHLETE. The risquey caption says “Are you looking my titles?” She writes a blog that is breathless teenage stuff. She is still star struck and charmingly coquettish. She says wants to be an actress (and she has enough guest appearances to be easy with the cameras.

But the cameras love both girl in very different ways, Venus as the all action sports girl who looks like she has taken time out from the Marines; Serena, like a boxer fighting to maker  her weight.

The two most eligible black girls in the world could of course be a tricky proposition in the marital stakes.  Don’t stay home much, a domineering father, not much good in the kitchen, a steely determination to get their own way plus a bank balance that will require some pre-nuptial agreements…Venus has been dating the golfer Hank Kuehne whose career has been nose diving ever since, albeit due to injury rather than other distractions.

Serena has had short public flings with director Brett Ratner, who she defended on a TV chat show when accused of dating a small fat man, but then broke up when he went on a drinking party to New York.  And actor hulk Jack Long.

Serena went very publoic on her blog when thery broke up. Only real men need apply.

A saddened Martina Hingis turns away from the cameras and into a self imposed purgatory and exile from the game she loves and could have dominated again. Technically she is suspended for allegedly testing positive for cocaine last year at Wimbledon and serving a two year ban although that is, at 28, a technicality probably. The 1997 Wimbledon champion  was a bright-eyed, soft-handed 16-year-old before she won the title and went on to win five grand slams. Hingis says she is retired and won’t pay the lawyers to defend her case. It is not after all that cocaine is classed as a  performance enhancing drug. She is not a Marion Jones or a Dwayne Chambers. A line of coke is surely guaranteed to be debilitating in tennis terms.

She has another year to serve and  talks about raising a family and in the meantime the girl who was born in Kosice in the Czech Republic but adopted Switzerland frustratedly contents herself with riding her six horse, the occasional exhibition match and soon some skiing again and watching less adept juniors picking up endorsement contracts which she might have rolled up in her kitbag.

She should be in tennis half of fame but instead she is in hiding.

“I wish today I still know what happened, how it got into my system. I feel like I’m innocent, but I can’t prove any different. I could have spent millions.” Why she lost to Laura Granville At Wimbledon  whom she should have beaten even if she had been high on cocaine, remains a mystery. It was Granville’s first and only time to advance beyond a grand slam third round.

The appeals process she points out is likely to be as long as the suspension in this present crisis of general sport conscience in which all drugs are bad and as Scotland’s Andy Baxter found even a sniff on an anti-asthma inhaler can cost you an Olympic bronze medal.

The ban coincided unhappily with her split from fiancée Czech player Radek Stepanek. She refuses to plot her return to the game for another year.

“I’m 28 and not getting younger. You start thinking about starting a family and other things as well. This is my second part of life. I don’t miss the tennis circuit. That’s all behind me.”

In front of the cameras she is still a champion and has more charisma than most.

“Tennis never runs away and I know all its rules — technically,” she says with a laugh. “But now it’s too early to think about being a being a coach. I prefer being on court and helping children, like my mum does  - she runs an academy in Switzerland - or have someone just come over, play with them for a week and then they go off to play tournaments.

“I just need one more year of patience. And I think I’ll be ready to do things again.”

But whether when she has served her time, the tennis hall of fame will welcome her back is another question, however peverse that may seem.

Jelena Jankovic won the Kremlin Cup and has moved to more than 750 points ahead of Dinara Safina in the world rankings. It was her third title in three weeks beating this time Russia’s Vera Zvonareva 6-2, 6-4. In a year when her compatriot Ana Ivanovic threatened to run off with the titles and headlines, Jelena has been accelerating her status and even now outmanouevered the Williams sisters.

Italy’s Flavia Pennetta battles against Jelena Jankovic at the Kremlin. In real time betting you can watch the odds change and bet on games like this:

Jankovic to Love		12/1		Pennetta to Love		10/1
Jankovic to 15		7/1		Pennetta to 15		19/4
Jankovic to 30		5/1		Pennetta to 30		15/4
Jankovic to 40		19/4		Pennetta to 40		15

Jelena Jankovic stood alone against the might of the Russians in the Kremlin Cup. There is live betting through the weekend on the final stages here across the weekend as it happens. You can bet real time, point to point, game to game. It’s fast, fun and furious. Plus next week the men convene again at the Madrid masters. There are questions over the fitness of Roger Federer and new French star Jo-Wilfred Tsonga. But the betting will be live all week. Give it a try.