Just a day after Victoria Azarenka, top seed at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, withdrew from the tournament, second seed Serena Williams also decided to leave before even starting her opening match, citing back pain that she said had been bothering her for a couple of weeks, and now the tournament's third seed and titleholder Agnieszka Radwanska has a considerably easier draw, especially given that she's constantly losing to Azarenka, and she's never beaten Williams in their four meetings. Read more »

World No.1 Victoria Azarenka and the player less than 48 hours away from overtaking the WTA pedestal Serena Williams have reached the final of the $2,369,000 Qatar Total Open. The action in the semis featured all the Top 4 women's tennis players, but those with dominantly favorable head-to-head records were victorious yet again.

Victoria Azarenka may be losing her No.1 ranking, but she's nowhere near exhausting her winning streak against Agnieszka Radwanska. Only in the first half of 2012 Azarenka beat Radwanska six times, but ever since they avoided each other in draws, until now, the Doha venue where they had tensions last year, when Radwanska accused Azarenka of gamesmanship. However, Radwanska is still waiting for her five minutes, as today Azarenka scored yet another comprehensive victory against her, 6-3 6-3, to reach the final of the Qatar Total Open. In the beginning of the match Azarenka dropped serve once, but after breaking for 3-2 in the first set she barely looked back, not facing a break point ever since. Read more »

After pretty much a year of Victoria Azarenka's reign on the top of the rankings (it was interrupted by Maria Sharapova for four weeks in the summer of 2012), women's tennis has a new No.1 – Serena Williams. Of course, not entirely new, Serena is on the top spot for the sixth time in her career and more than ten years after she first claimed it. As if she lacked historic accomplishments and awe-inspiring results, at the age of 31, Serena became the oldest female to become a No.1 since the computer rankings were introduced. Read more »

Thursday's action at the Qatar Total Open was shaping up the quarterfinals and all the seeded players advanced, except in one match that was a clash of two seeds, in which the higher seed prevailed when No.7 Petra Kvitova took out No.11 Nadia Petrova after dropping the first set and coming back from behind in both the remaining sets to finally win 4-6 6-4 6-3.

Kvitova is now in an intimidating position, finding herself between Serena Williams and the 31-year-old American's No.1 ranking – if Serena beats Kvitova in the quarterfinals, she will get back to the top of the WTA standings and become the oldest player ever to be No.1. Serena has won 58 of her last 61 matches and today she stormed past Urszula Radwanska 6-0 6-3 in just 57 minutes.

The other quarterfinal in the bottom half of the draw will be between good friends Agnieszka Radwanska and Caroline Wozniacki. By beating Ana Ivanovic 6-1 7-6(6), even though the Serb was serving for the second set, Radwanska earned her 15th win of the season, which makes her the leader in that department. Wozniacki worked hard to eliminate Mona Barthel 7-6(6) 6-3, the German who's been making a big name for herself, especially this season.

In the top half of the draw, world No.1 Victoria Azarenka recorded her sixth career double bagel, ousting Christina McHale, and is to face Sara Errani, who won a marathon against Daniela Hantuchova 7-5 5-7 6-2. We are also having a Maria Sharapova vs. Samantha Stosur quarterfinal. Sharapova was better than Klara Zakopalova 6-3 6-3, while Stosur stopped the run of Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-4 7-5. (photos: © Neal Trousdale)

Maria Sharapova reached the Australian Open semifinals, losing just nine games on the way, which is the tournament record, and will next face Li Na, who reached the final four by ending Agnieszka Radwanska's perfect 13-0 winning streak of 2013.

Can you believe that Sharapova has not only lost just nine games in five matches at the Australian Open, but she dropped her serve just twice! Sharapova's quarterfinal opponent Ekaterina Makarova was wiped off the court in 66 minutes, 6-2 6-2, but she was one of the players that earned a break against the second seed this fortnight, alongside Venus Williams.

Li has now made the semifinals in three of the past four years at the Australian Open. Even the player with the best win-loss record this season, actually the only player that beat her in 2013 (in Sydney semifinals), couldn't stop her at the tournament where she feels at home. Li won an unpredictable first set against Radwanska, that lasted more than an hour, and from 0-2 down in the second set she took control by winning five straight games. In total, there were 10 breaks of serve and final score was 7-5 6-3.

The semifinal will be a match between the Australian Open runner-ups of the two previous years. Sharapova leads 8-4 in their meetings so far, including all the three they had last season.

Tomorrow we're having the remaining two quarterfinals: Victoria Azarenka vs. Svetlana Kuznetsova and Serena Williams vs. Sloane Stephens. (photos: © Neal Trousdale)