Daily Bagel: Withdrawals plague Dubai

The Daily Bagel is your dose of the interesting reporting, writing and quipping from around the Internet.

• Enjoy some highlights from Roger Federer's 6-1, 6-4 win over Juan Martin del Potro in Sunday's Rotterdam final.

• The withdrawals continue in Dubai. Petra Kvitova, Vera Zvonareva and Li Na already pulled out, and Dominika Cibulkova on Tuesday retired with a hamstring injury and Maria Kirilenko withdrew from doubles. It's way too early in a jam-packed season for this many withdrawals to affect these draws.

• SI.com's Bruce Jenkins evaluates the Americans' performances at last week's SAP Open. Of 19-year-old Ryan Harrison, Jenkins writes: "He's developed his own penetrating serve, a looming threat for anyone he plays. His groundstrokes are solid, as well as his all-court movement. As Davis Cup captain Jim Courier noted during Harrison's stint with the team in Switzerland, he just needs some time."

• WTA Backspin takes an in-depth look at Victoria Azarenka's surge. "Since the end of the '11 season, there has been much talk of Petra Kvitova being 'The One,' the player of her generation," Todd Spiker writes. "It's an open title that has been floating around aimlessly without any serious takers since the Serena Slam settled the previous argument a decade ago. The money is still on Kvitova being that player, but... maybe it's Vika."

• I missed this earlier, but Kimiko Date-Krumm was a great blogger while she was at the Pattaya Open in Thailand. She even writes in the third person. "The present Kimiko is stronger than before," she writes in response to a question about her current form. "In 1996 I had a young body and bigger muscles, but I was not so strong mentally. Now I have more experience and more mental strength. So I guess the answer is yes, I can beat the 1996 Kimiko, but only for a short time, it won't be always!"

• Non-tennis: Olympus is no longer the sponsor of the U.S. Open Series (having been replaced by Emirates Airlines). This read about its recent accounting scandal sheds some light on the unique nature of  Japanese business culture.

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