Last year fashion was the topic of Wimbledon with Bethanie Mattek Sands' tennis-ball jacket and Venus Williams' awkward zipper-outfit, but this year tenniswear is in the safe zone, except for Serena Williams' color challenge. Let's have a closer look.

Serena Williams challenged the White Clothing Rule by pairing the Nike Women's London Statement Baseline Dress with cerise shorts/knickers and a matching headband, while Wimbledon requires the outfits to be without solid mass of coloring and little or no dark or bold colors. Nike was not pushing the boundaries with defending champion Petra Kvitova, who was traditionally wearing a sporty, ordinary outfit.

Maria Sharapova, the fresh proud owner of a career Grand Slam, is always fully-prepared for fashion scrutiny, thinking out her outfits in detail from head to toe with the Nike team. For the touch of color that the white Wimbledon allows, Sharapova chose liquid lime. Here you can see how the Nike Women's Maria Slam Statement Dress looks from the back.

My favorite of the tournament is Maria Kirilenko in the Adidas Adipure line. The white dress with a pleated skirt features craft emerald contrasting stripes. Read more »

Infographics seem to be the latest trend and the WTA Tour has joined the wagon. We have already made our preview of the Wimbledon women's singles final between Serena Williams and Agnieszka Radwanska, but this illustrated version is also nice to see. Notice that Serena has played 25 more games than Radwanska to reach the final, but also, the 13-time Grand Slam champion hit 98 winners more than the Pole and 71 aces more!

Additional info: Radwanska has been suffering from a respiratory illness, which caused her to cancel her today's presser, but now I've read it on Reuters that Radwanska is feeling good on the court despite not being able to speak away from the court, so I don't expect her to withdraw from the final due to the breathing problems.

Agnieszka Radwanska is far from a favorite in the Wimbledon final against Serena Williams and the respiratory illness that has caused her to cancel her Friday news conference is making her an even less likely Wimbledon 2012 champion.

Radwanska is not able to talk easily. Even in her semifinal win Radwanska was troubled by the ailment and her post-match conference was cut short due to her coughing. Moreover, Radwanska withdrew from women’s doubles on Wednesday also because of the illness.

It is still unclear what all this means for the final, but it is far from a positive development. (source: ESPN, photo: © Neal Trousdale)

Serena Williams aced her way into her seventh Wimbledon final and will face Agnieszka Radwanska, a debutante at that stage of a Grand Slam. Will the abundance of Serena's experience and her intimidating serve prevail or will Agnieszka's craftiness produce the first Polish Grand Slam champion. Our guest poster Omair will look at the numbers behind their Wimbledon 2012 performance and make a statistical prediction. Enjoy!

Serena Williams will walk onto Centre Court knowing that she is into her seventh Wimbledon final and has gone 4-2 in the prior six, with the losses coming at the hands of Maria Sharapova (2004) and Venus Williams (2008), in fact only three players have been able to beat Serena in her prior 17 major final appearances (Venus – twice, Sharapova, and Samantha Stosur). Serena will no doubt be the favorite and will be highly motivated to win her fifth Venus Rosewater Dish and her first Grand Slam title in two years (her last coming here at Wimbledon in 2010).

Radwanska walks onto Centre Court knowing that she has a shot at the top spot and that she can become the first ever Polish player to win a Grand Slam and join the elite club of 13 players who have won a major at both junior and senior levels.

The pair has met twice, both meetings coming in 2008. Surprisingly, Serena was ranked sixth then as well and both went in favor of Serena in straight sets, one of those wins was in the quarters of Wimbledon.

Let us have a look at the performance of the players so far at Wimbledon 2012.

* I have used the average aces, double faults, winners and unforced errors hit by the player per match.

The stats are clearly in favor of the sixth-seeded American, the four-time Wimbledon champion. Serena has won a whopping 80% of her first serves, while Radwanska has been able to win just 68%. Serena has also won 10% more points on her second serve, compared to her title match opponent. Serena lost just one point on her first serve in the first set of her semifinal match against Victoria Azarenka, one of the best returners on the Tour, and lost a total of four points on serve in that set. Read more »

Acerena, that's how we can call Serena Williams from now on. In today's Wimbledon semifinal victory, the American fired 24 aces, the 24th in style, on the match point, that is actually 4×6 one whole set, bettering her personal best of 23 achieved only three rounds ago against Zheng Jie. Serena's total number of aces at Wimbledon 2012 up to the final is 85, while second-ranked in that department is quarterfinalist Sabine Lisicki with 35. Can Williams' serving impress you more? You bet she can! Today against world No.2 Victoria Azarenka, Williams hit those 24 aces without making a single double fault! I don't like using multiple exclamation marks, but I feel like using five at this point.

You remember that in our preview we mentioned that Azarenka's pre-semifinal stats were 9% better than Serena's on the net and 13% better on the receiving points won, but today the sixth-seeded Serena lifted up her level there as well, winning 71% to Azarenka's 73% on the net and 36% to Azarenka's 27% of the receiving points won. In winners to unforced errors differential Serena was brutally dominant, hitting 45 winners to Azarenka's 14, and 14 unforced errors to Azarenka's just 5 less. Final score: 6-3 7-6(6). Williams has now won her last eight matches against Top 2 players, in straight sets!

Moreover, the day before the semifinal, Acerena played two doubles matches alongside sister Venus, won them both to reach the quarterfinal, and today shortly after her win in singles, Acerena got back to the court and celebrated yet another victory with Venus, reaching the Wimbledon doubles semifinal where they will face top seeds Liezer Huber and Lisa Raymond. Every time the Williams sisters play doubles at Wimbledon, one of them wins the singles title. That tradition can very well be continued as Serena takes on first-time Grand Slam finalist Agnieszka Radwanska in the title match.

Actually, the third-seeded Radwanska was the only Top 15 player never to have been in a Grand Slam semifinal, but she cast that spell away at this Wimbledon and even reached the last match of the tournament in singles by eliminating Angelique Kerber 6-3 6-4. Hitting just six unforced errors in the entire match, Radwanska recovered from a 3-1 deficit in the first set to take five games in a row and win the set, while in the second set a sole break in the fifth game allowed Radwanska to establish herself as a victor over Kerber.

If Radwanska wins the final she will climb to No.1 in the WTA rankings for the first time. Given Serena's serving and experience, few of us believe that can happen, but who knows. Moreover, Radwanska was already the first Pole in the Open Era, male or female, to reach a Grand Slam semifinal, and now she is the first one in the final. (photos: © Neal Trousdale)

Who will progress to the final of Wimbledon 2012? Let's get a closer look at the semifinal between third seed Agnieszka Radwanska and eighth seed Angelique Kerber and try to find out. The preview is courtesy of our loyal contributor Omair.

Third-ranked Agnieszka Radwanska has finally broken the Grand Slam quarterfinal spell and made her way into her very first major semifinal. The Pole's opponent in the semifinal, world No.8 Angelique Kerber, has also casted away some spells. Coming into this year's Wimbledon, she had won a total of two matches at the tournament in her four previous attempts, but now she finds herself in the semifinal, having won five straight matches.

With Radwanska and Kerber having never made a Grand Slam final, we are guaranteed to have one first time Slam finalist for the third consecutive Grand Slam (Australian Open: Victoria Azarenka, French Open: Sara Errani, Wimbledon: Radwanska or Kerber?). Also, Kerber is trying to become the first German woman to make it to the final of Wimbledon, since Steffi Graf lost the final to Lindsay Davenport in 1999.

Let us have a look at the performance of the players so far at Wimbledon 2012:

* I have used the average aces, double faults, winners and unforced errors hit by the player per match.

If we talk in terms of stats, Kerber and Radwanska are almost even in every department, with one major exception, the second serve department. Kerber has won 7% more points than Radwanska. Radwanska's serve has never been her weapon, but if she is to make her way past Kerber, she will have to make the best of her serve. They are parallel in their return games and their winners-unforced errors differential. Radwanska is somewhat better than Kerber at net as well and she would love to test her opponent's skill on the points played at net. Read more »

Petra Kvitova, Agnieszka Radwanska and Caroline Wozniacki - seeds number two, one and three respectively – went out in the first round of the AEGON International in Eastbourne.

Last year Kvitova was runner-up at the grasscourt tournament and she went on to win Wimbledon. This year, however, the Czech opened her grass season with a loss to fellow lefty Ekaterina Makarova 7-5 6-4, whom she defeated to reach the quarterfinals in 2011. Makarova, the 2010 Eastbourne champion and the semifinalist last week in Birmingham, scored her first Top 5 win.

Agnieszka Radwanska, top seed and champion at Eastbourne in 2008, fell in the first round to Tsvetana Pironkova 6-2 6-4, Wimbledon 2011 quarterfinalist and Wimbledon 2010 semifinalist, while third seed Caroline Wozniacki lost to Christina McHale 6-1 6-7(7) 6-4.

However, defending champion and fourth seed Marion Bartoli advanced to the second round with a 6-2 6-2 win over Sorana Cirstea. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

Women's Tennis Blog's contributor Omair is known for his statistical approach to tennis, but now he's summing up the claycourt season, awarding the WTA players titles based on their performance at Roland Garros 2012. Do you agree with Omair's titles? Feel free to comment!

Maria Sharapova – CLAY QUEEN

Having won Stuttgart and Rome, Sharapova was 11-1 on clay coming into the French Open, and she made it 18-1, her lone loss coming at the hands of Serena Williams on the blue clay of Madrid.

Sara Errani – CINDERELLA

Although Errani was the claycourt wins leader entering the French Open, she had never been beyond the second round of the tournament in her last four attempts, had been past the third round of a Grand Slam only once in the last eighteen majors (quarterfinals at this year's Australian Open) and was 0-28 against Top 10 players. It all changed at this year's Franch Open, she not only reached her first Grand Slam final, but in doing so recorded her first two victories over Top 10 players. Although she fell short to Sharapova in the final, she had a great run to the championship match.

Samantha Stosur – UNDERACHIEVER

Stosur's game is best suited to clay and she is a great claycourt player as is evidenced by her record at Roland Garros – she has been to the semifinals or better for three of the past four years, including this year's semifinal. She is one of the fittest athletes on the Tour at the moment, and with her game she no doubt was an underachiever. Read more »