What a refreshment! The WTA is updating us on Tatiana Golovin.

In the peak of her success, at the top of her game, Tatiana Golovin was faced with a recognition that she would probably never play tennis again. What later proved to be a chronic back inflammation struck when the Russian-born Frenchwoman was a 20-year-old close to reaching Top 10 in the WTA rankings, and after a breakthrough 2007 with two titles (Portoroz and Amelia Island) and two finals (Stuttgart and Zurich).

At the time I never thought I would stop six months later […] Mentally it was very tough. It's a big shock when something so important in your life goes away. It took me a whole year to realize I couldn't play anymore. I took time off to go away from everything and try to find myself again.

Even though she was not prepared for such a turn in her life, Golovin has learned to embrace what she has and is now studying and spending more time with family and friends. Read more »

Let's kick-off the 2011 retrospections of WTA players' outfits with world No.1 Caroline Wozniacki. We've followed the Dane since her days with Adidas Adilibria in 2009 and closely throughout her cooperation with Adidas by Stella McCartney which was launched at the 2009 US Open.

Once again Wozniacki finished the year No.1 and we got to see her on the courts a lot, but the variety of her outfits wasn't wide. Wozniacki played 22 tournaments in 2011, won six of them (Dubai, Indian Wells, Charleston, Brussels, Copenhagen, New Haven), and all her new outfits were either blueprint, white or coral (or some combination of the three colors). A refreshment came only at the end of the season with a light yellow shade of a beautifully-designed dress. Also, notice that at three Grand Slams she wore a white dress!

The 21-year-old started the year in Sydney with last year's yellow top contrasting a dark skirt. At the Australian Open she sported a white ballerina dress. As a reminder, check out what the other women's tennis players wore at Melbourne.

In Dubai and Doha Wozniacki wore a white skirt and a coral top. Long-sleeves were there as well.

The blueprint ruffle dress was introduced during the Indian Wells. In my opinion, the dress is nice, but the ruffles, supposedly its highlight, are spoiling it. Read more »

Thanks to Linda, who scanned childhood photos from Flavia Pennetta's autobiography "Dritto al cuore" (Straight to the Heart), and Women's Tennis Blog reader Tony, who retweeted me the pictures, you get to see the tennis star when she started out.

I love the romantic look that our Italian stars used to nurture when they were kids. Remember Sara Errani? Flavia looks beautiful in the long light dress, gazing at her racquet.

In the second photo you can see Flavia with her parents and elder sister Giorgia. They all play recreational tennis. Read more »

On Monday our guest poster and stats lover Omair dug us into the numbers of his detailed analysis about the number of wins year-end Top 10 players scored over Top 10 players in 2011 and their best tournaments. Now it's time for Part 2 and a different perspective – results of the Top 10 stars approached through their losses.

First have a look at the table showing average rank of players who defeated each of the year-end Top 10 players and the lowest-ranked player to beat year-end Top 10 players during 2011. 

Vera Zvonareva needs to be mentioned here for her consistency as she is the only one of the Top 10 who was not beaten by a player ranked outside Top 35, while the rest of her colleagues from this elite group were beaten at least twice. The lowest-ranked player to defeat Zvonareva during 2011 was Tsvetana Pironkova, ranked 33rd (seeded 32nd) during the third round of Wimbledon.

Of Zvonareva's 22 losses only three came at the hands of players ranked between 30 and 35 and interestingly they came at the hands of players ranked 31, 32, and 33. Also, a total of only three losses came at the hands of players ranked between 21 and 29, while the rest of 16 came at the hands of Top 20 players. Average rank of Zvonareva's conquerors was 15, while the average rank of the conquerors of all the remaining Top 10 players was not even within Top 20.

Victoria Azarenka also needs to be mentioned here, because only five of her 17 losses came at the hands of players ranked outside Top 20, and of those five losses two came at the hands of Serena Williams who had low ranking due to her health problems and lack of play. Average rank of Azarenka's conquerors in 2011 was 23.

Read more »

Off-season is time for looking back on the tennis year behind, and we're doing that by our reflections and analysis, but it's also the time of preparation for the next year and sports designers are already working hard, actually numerous models that the WTA stars are expected to wear in 2012 have already leaked.

Maria Sharapova is expected to go for white with green details for the Australian section of the season. And that's not all – here you can see even more new Nike clothes.

As for Adidas, this week the brand launched their new Barricade 7.0 shoes and in the promo Andrea Petkovic showcased several pieces from the Adidas' new collection, in purple, light blue and red. I was confirmed that those are the designs we'll be seeing on the courts in 2012. Read more »

Last month Women's Tennis Blog informed you that Dominika Cibulkova and Caroline Wozniacki were about to play the Tennis Classic 2011 exhibition in Bratislava. The event took place yesterday and our reader Marine visited it, which she has readily documented on her Tennis Notebook blog.

It was a day of relaxation for the tennis stars, especially for Wozniacki who didn't take her singles match with Cibulkova seriously and initiated the activities such as champagne drinking, dancing with cheerleaders and impersonation of WTA and ATP players. The crowd found Wozniacki's moves entertaining and the world No.1 even had a few marriage proposals. As Marine reports, Cibulkova didn't have an easy task keeping up with Wozniacki's energy. Read more »

We can soon start calling our reader Omair a stats expert. After seeing his "Comparative analysis of Top 10 players and their performance at big tournaments in 2011" received so well, Omair eagerly rushed to thrill us with more analysis, this time focusing on the year-end Top 10 players and the ranking of opponents that they beat in 2011 (Part 1) and on the ranking of opponents that beat them (Part 2). Let the tables do the talking!

The table above shows the number of tournaments where a year-end Top 10 player defeated more than one Top 10 player. Petra Kvitova tops here with three tournaments, at two of which she defeated three or more Top 10 players en route to the title (Madrid and WTA Championships). World number one Caroline Wozniacki is the only Top 10 player who did not beat two Top 10 players in a single tournament.

Let's continue with tables showing tournaments won by each Top 10 player and tournaments where the player (though did not end up winning the event) ended up beating two or more Top 10 players.

Read more »

A week and a half ago Women's Tennis Blog showed you the cover of Daniela Hantuchova's 2012 charity calendar, aimed at helping HIV-positive children in Cambodia by providing them with appropriate doctors and medicines. Now you can buy the calendar for $21.99 at Tennis Warehouse and enjoy it "not just for what it is, but for what it can do", as Hantuchova said. We got the scoop into a few pages of the calendar and as you can see the Slovakian is looking fabulous in the Monte Carlo setting.

This is the second time Hantuchova has done this calendar and on her website she noted that improvements can already be noticed, which keeps her motivated to make as much of a difference in the children's lives as possible. In addition, Hantuchova is sharing a story of how she got involved with this project: Read more »

Adidas' experts spent 2,500 hours colleborating with professional and semi-professional atheletes in order to figure out what type of shoe would best fit their needs and this month Adidas is launching the redesigned Barricade 7.0, which have undergone the greatest change in 11 years.

World No.10 Andrea Petkovic is promoting the women's Barricade shoe, with new features such as much less weight, a more elegant design and a softer forefoot flex:

In my rehabilitation from a torn ACL I had to work on my leg strength and stability. It showed me how important stability is for a powerful game. The Barricade gives me the stability I need.

As you can see, Andrea is also wearing new Adidas clothes. I suppose it's a collection for 2012.

Ana Ivanovic and her golfer boyfriend Adam Scott tend to keep themselves away from the spotlight, unlike the other tennis-golf pairing of Caroline Wozniacki and Rory McIlroy, but recently Ivanovic has been very publicly supporting her man while she's enjoying the off-season.

Looking elegant in a black Cavalli dress, Ivanovic attended the Gala Celebration for the 2011 Presidents Cup in Melbourne with her boyfriend on November 15. Read more »