Pat Cash compares the contrasting fortunes of teen starlets Ana Ivanovic and Nicole Vaidisova in his exclusive Eurosport blog from the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships.

The Ana Ivanovic v Nicole Vaidisova second-round match was I think in many ways a bit of a disappointment for the crowd.

We expected a couple of young guns out there, as Vaidisova certainly in 2006 looked like she was really going to be a top five, top ten player.

It hasn't really happened for her though. She tends to spray the ball around a lot and certainly once Ivanovic grabbed the first set it was basically all over.

And it wasn't so much Ivanovic's good play as much as Vaidisova's poor play. The Czech lost the second set 6-0, and she's on her way out of this tournament and into the next one.

I think Ivanovic, meanwhile, certainly has the talent and the ability to be one of the leaders and consistent challengers in the Grand Slams and she's proven that already by getting to two Grand Slam finals within a year.

She needs to work on various bits and pieces of her game, but she has been improving and will continue to improve.

I think she's got a fantastic serve, one of the best serves on the circuit, no doubt about that. That's only going to increase as a weapon.

She needs to work on her movement and fitness, and back these matches up time after time and become as consistent as the likes of Justine Henin, Maria Sharapova, and the Williams' sisters, but I think it's only a matter of time.

I just hope that she doesn't get injured and that she'll be out there as one of the top girls consistently over the next few years.

There's plenty of competition out there, but I definitely think it's a worthwhile bet to back her over the next two or three years to win a major.

She's just not quite as consistent yet, but it's only the beginning of the year and she's already had some great results.

Out of today's matches the one that was a disappointment to the fans really was the Jelena Jankovic v Anna Chakvetadze match, where the Russian pulled out with an injury.

Chakvetadze clearly brought an injury into the match and unfortunately had to default.

That was a real break for Jankovic, because she had a real battle late last night with India's Sania Mirza and that match went on and on. She's getting a bit of rest now, so she should be fresh for the semi-finals tomorrow.

In the other early quarter-final Svetlana Kuznetsova beat Amelie Maruesmo in an interesting match.

Mauresmo's been struggling a little bit with confidence in her form at the moment and what happen when you are struggling a little bit you often tend to get off to a bad start.

It takes you a while to settle and get your eye in and that's exactly what happened today with Mauresmo as Kuznetsova took the first set easily.

The second set was much more competitive and Mauresmo had quite a few chances in fact to grab the second set, but as the case is when you're not quite 100 percent full of confidence you let those opportunities slip, and she narrowly went down in the second set 7-6.

All in all it looked like it could have gone all of the way to the third set, but Kuznetsova pulled it out in straight sets in the end.

The big match last night was actually a very competitive match, where Justine Henin struggled for a little bit against Slovenia's Katarina Srebotnik.

But you have to give Srebotnik credit. It was a great match between two great all-around players.

Srebotnik's got one of the better serves on the circuit. She's sort of been known as a doubles player as such, but not the case last night.

The match went all the way to the wire, it lasted about three hours with lots of excitement and plenty of great tennis.

But what a competitor Henin is and she fought her way through even though she was clearly not in 100 percent top form.

The conditions here are very different to the rest of the world at the moment and that played a part.

Certainly there were wind storms last week in Doha, and if you come from Europe of course you've been playing indoors.

It's been warm conditions out here, though, and the balls are flying so a good server like Srebotnik, if she serves well, is going to give anyone a lot of trouble. That was the case last night, but Henin came through.

For Henin, it's always hard to back up a great year like the one she had in 2007.

You go in full of confidence, but I don't think you go out there and expect to win all of the championships the way she did last year.

She's certainly one of the best claycourt players, if not the best of all time. She continues to cruise through the French Open quite incredibly.

She's such a small girl and competing against the big powerful girls that are out there on the circuit, it's going to be tough work to back that up year in and year out, but she seems to be able to do it. She's quite something.

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