By Mike McIntyre

The women's Dubai Tennis Championship ended on Saturday with Venus Williams as deserving champion. Williams defeated Virginie "The Razzer" Razzano 6-4, 6-2 in an anti-climactic final match. Williams tore through the draw with ease, with the exception of a semi-final matchup with her sister Serena. There is no doubt that the Williams sisters were the most dominant players in the draw despite Serena's erratic play. If it weren't for frequent mental lapses, the younger Williams may well have been hoisting the champions trophy. Venus was the more steady of the two, yet Serena showed flashes of brilliance when she seemingly chose to.

The play of the two sisters this week makes me wonder how they "only" have seventeen Grand Slams between them. The way Venus is playing tennis at the age of twenty eight and Serena at twenty seven makes me believe that several more are on the way. They have won three of the four Slams since Justine Henin retired last May and on hard court appear to be unchallenged at the moment.

While nobody else in Dubai impressed me with their level of play as the two Williams sisters did there were still some noteworthy performances. Razzano had what she described as the best performance of her career. Along the way she knocked off number two seed Dinara Safina, number five seed Vera Zvonareva, and former top ten player Daniela Hantuchova. Razzano won over the fans in Dubai with her emotional response after defeating Kaia Kanepi in the semi-finals. She could hardly maintain her composure in the on-court interview after the match, as tears of joy flowed freely. Even after being defeated by Venus in the finals she was clearly quite proud of her achievement as she clutched the runner-up trophy tightly.

Estonia's Kaia Kanepi also had a strong showing this past week as she defeated Jelena Jankovic and attained the semi-finals. Twenty two year old Elena Vesnina from Russia also looks like a player on the rise. Starting 2009 strong in Auckland, New Zealand she made her first WTA tour final. Here in Dubai she knocked off last year's finalist Svetlana Kuznetsova and another seeded player in Dominika Cibulkova. Russia seems to keep pumping out top level tennis talent on the female side - but where is the United States equivalent???

So the women's stop in Dubai has now completed and seems to have survived the Shahar Peer incident. The WTA has fined the tournament $300,000 for it's blatant act of racism towards the Israeli player and compensated her for being left out of the draw. Earlier in the week I was critical of Venus for not using her position as an athlete on tour to speak loudly on the issue and she totally redeemed herself last night. Not only did she end her trophy acceptance speech by criticizing the actions of the UAE and the tournament in excluding Peer, but she also spoke of the progress being made with the inclusion of Andy Ram this coming week. In the post match press conference she also spoke at length about the situation.

“I felt like I had to talk about her,” Williams said. “I thought it was brave of her to come here and try and play despite knowing that it is not going to be easy for her. My dad grew up in an area where if you spoke too much, it was your life. So I felt I had a small opportunity to say something where everyone will listen. Obviously, Andy Ram got his visa, so I’ll be happy to come and defend next year. If everyone is not given the equal opportunity to play, I’d rethink."

The men's tournament starts Monday and is without several of the big names you would normally find here. Federer and Nadal have both withdrawn due to injuries, while Andy Roddick could not make it in time as he is in the finals in Memphis and also cited the exclusion of Peer as a reason to stay home. A round table media session that was supposed to happen today at the exclusive Burj al Arab hotel was canceled, no doubt due to the lack of star presence in the draw. Without the top two players in the world, Dubai will still get plenty of excitement from Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and of course Andy Ram.