One of the greatest singers of all time, Whitney Houston, passed away at the age of 48 on February 11, and the whole world was struck, including the WTA community. Therefore, I decided to make a WTA tribute to Whitney by compiling tweets of women's tennis players mentioning the voice behind so many timeless love songs.

Serena Williams

Caroline Wozniacki

Dinara Safina

Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova

Svetlana Kuznetsova

Victoria Azarenka

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After two days of rain troubled the US Open organizers and fans, women's quarterfinals finally took place and we have our final four: Serena Williams, Caroline Wozniacki, Angelique Kerber and Samantha Stosur. Semifinals will be played on Saturday.

Serena Williams (28) vs. Caroline Wozniacki (1)

This semifinal will be especially interesting because it is an encounter of a supposed deserved No.1 and real No.1. Wozniacki has to win this one if she wants to prove all the doubters in her game wrong, this is a perfect opportunity to do so. Since Wozniacki overtook the top position in the rankings from Serena, the two haven't clashed, but in their last and only two meetings in 2009, Williams won.

Serena is yet to lose a set at the tournament. The quarterfinal with Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova featured six breaks of serve in the beginning before Serena got on track and in the 12th game broke the Russian to take the first set. In the second set Williams lost just three points on her serve and ended the match with her sixth ace. Final score: 7-5 6-1.

Wozniacki advanced with a 6-1 7-6(5) win over Andrea Petkovic. Wozniacki let a 5-3 lead in the second set slip and ended up playing a tiebreak, in which Petkovic made five unforced errors and spoiled the comeback.

Samantha Stosur (9) vs. Angelique Kerber

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Dear readers, Florian Meier from OnlineTennisInstruction.com is back to preview the US Open quarterfinals. One of his and actually the world's biggest favorites Maria Sharapova was eliminated early, but Serena Williams is still doing strong. Let's see what Florian's predictions look like now.

US Open quarterfinals preview: Serena still the tournament favorite

We are now at the quarterfinals stage of the tournament and Serena looks almost unbeatable to me at this point (join our poll to vote who has the best chance of shaking Serena's dominance this US Open). Let’s have a closer look at the upcoming quarterfinal match-ups.

CAROLINE WOZNIACKI versus ANDREA PETKOVIC

Wozniacki has had a really good draw so far in this tournament and to me she was not all that convincing in her victory against Svetlana Kuznetsova. I am not sure how strong her form actually is. She was down 4-1 in the second set against Kuznetsova who is also not in her best form at the moment.

Andrea Petkovic looked convincing in her last two matches but she has not faced any really strong players so far in this tournament. Petkovic is also playing with an injured knee but it seems to be holding up fine so far in the tournament. Wozniacki and Petkovic are 1-1 in their career matches. Petkovic won this year on a hard court in Miami and Wozniacki won on an indoor clay court in Stuttgart.
In order to beat Wozniacki you have to be able to get by her with some firepower and be patient enough to work the point a few times. I believe Petkovic has these capabilities. Andrea is fired up like I have never seen her before and I think she is also mentally ready to beat someone like Wozniacki in a Grand Slam quarterfinal.

Assuming that Petkovic’s knee holds up, I pick her as my favorite in a very close match.

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The first week of the US Open has almost come to a close and Adidas-clad Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Maria Kirilenko are both working their way through singles and doubles draws (in singles they are in the fourth round and in doubles in the second). There's one thing you may not have noticed, though: Pavlyuchenkova and Kirilenko are wearing personalised miadidas Barricade Adilibria shoes that you can make your own.

To celebrate these one-of-a-kind shoes, Adidas has lauched a specific auction site and the tennis stars' shoes can go straight from their feet to yours. The idea behind free-bid is for users to tell Adidas how these shoes will inspire them by completing the phrase, "the ones that will".

Monday at the Rogers Cup was a bad day for seeded players, as only one advanced and three of the other four fell to qualifiers in their opening matches.

The first in action was the winning seed, Samantha Stosur, but even her victory came only after she lost the first set 6-4 to Ayumi Morita. Final score: 4-6 6-2 6-3.

No.9 seed Marion Bartoli had won 19 of her last 23 matches, including her Eastbourne title, and had a perfect 4-0 head-to-head record against Galina Voskoboeva, but in the first round of the Rogers Cup the Kazakh qualifier was better and took Bartoli out 6-3 6-3. It is Voskoboeva's first Top 10 victory and at the recent Baku Cup she played her first WTA semifinals. Read more »

First-time Grand Slam quarterfinalist Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova looked to be following up her upset of world No.3 Vera Zvonareva with an upset of defending champion Francesca Schiavone when the score was 6-1 4-1 for the 19-year-old Russian.

However, Schiavone, 11 years older than her opponent, dragged out a 7-5 second-set win and in the third set she raced to a 5-1 lead. Even though Pavlyuchenkova managed to level at 5-5, the fifth-seeded Italian was determined to finish the job, and on her third match point defeated the 14th-seeded Russian 1-6 7-5 7-5.

In the semis Schiavone will play the winner of the Marion Bartoli vs. Svetlana Kuznetsova quarterfinal. (photo by our reader Tony)

Defending champion Francesca Schiavone resisted the challenge of Jelena Jankovic and advanced to the quarterfinals of Roland Garros. On her tournament debut ten years ago she reached the quarterfinals, and together with her last year's title, this is her third appearance in the final eight of Roland Garros.

The fourth-round match between Schiavone and Jankovic was tense and could have gone either way, but the Italian's good serves and aggressiveness gave her that extra something needed to defeat the Serb who played Roland Garros semifinals in 2007, 2008 and 2010.

The world No.10 Jankovic has a lot to regret, at times she was leading in the third set, and both the players were pretty much equal, but the moment Jankovic allowed Schiavone to break her at 4-4, her fall was strongly suggested. Schiavone didn't let the opportunity slip away and won the match 6-3 2-6 6-4.

Schiavone's opponent in the quarterfinals will be Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, who advanced with a 7-6(4) 2-6 6-2 victory over third seed Vera Zvonareva. With top seed Caroline Wozniacki and second seed Kim Clijsters already out, this is the first French Open since 1968 that none of the top three seeds are in the quarterfinals! World No.4 Victoria Azarenka is now the highest-ranked player left in the draw.

Pavlyuchenkova, who is 11 years younger than her next opponent Schiavone, will be playing her first Grand Slam quarterfinal. (photo courtesy of our reader Tony)

Player parties provide a perfect venue for players to get in touch with their glamorous side (if they have one) and the blue red carpet on Tuesday night at the Paris Theater in Miami was one of the best such occasions.

Let's start with my favorites. Russian Anna Kournikova simply knows what to wear and how to work it, while her countrywoman Vera Zvonareva looks very pretty in a romantic purple dress.

Although I've been in the mood for floral prints lately, Anastasia Plavyuchenkova's dress is too much for my taste. Maria Sharapova is still faithful to her vintage-oriented style. Read more »

Top seed Jelena Jankovic got off to a good start, but it was defending champion and second seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova that prevailed and won the Whirlpool Monterrey Open final 2-6 6-2 6-3. The International-level Mexican event is the tournament where the Russian first triumphed and now she's managed to retain her crown. Pavlyuchenkova also won the Istanbul Cup last year.

In the semifinals Pavlyuchenkova ended Gisela Dulko's Mexican winning streak. Dulko had won Acapulco and her quarterfinal win at the Monterrey Open was her eighth straight match win. Other players that the 19-ranked Pavlyuchenkova defeated at the 2011 Monterrey Open include Eleni Danilidou, Melanie Oudin and Greta Arn.

Jankovic was looking for her 13th career title and her first since last year's Indian Wells, but Pavlyuchenkova only improved her record against the Serb to 2-0. In addition, the sixth-ranked Jankovic now has a negative record in career finals (12-13), while Pavlyuchenkova kept her record in Monterrey perfect (10-0) and her win-loss record in career finals is now 3-0. (photo via Yahoo)

On the left you can see the results of this weekend’s Fed Cup action in World Group.

The first thing I’d like to point out is that Russia recovered their Saturday’s two hurtful losses on home soil in Moscow (Svetlana Kuznetsova’s to Alize Cornet, and Maria Sharapova’s to Virginie Razzano) and defeated France 3-2 to reach the semifinals. At least on paper, the improvement happened when Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova replaced Maria Sharapova! Pavlyuchenkova defeated Cornet, Kuznetsova defeated Razzano, and the two of them together clinched victory for Russia by winning the deciding doubles over Julie Coin and Pauline Parmentier.

Russia will play holders Italy in April’s semifinals. Italy eased past Australia 4-1, and that result includes the repeat of the 2010 French Open final in which Francesca Schiavone beat Samantha Stosur.

The other semifinal will feature Belgium and the Czech Republic. Belgium won 4-1 against the United States, last year's runners-up. Kim Clijsters and Yanina Wickmayer both won their two singles matches. As for the Czech Republic, they earned an unassailable 3-0 lead with Petra Kvitova’s victory over Daniela Hantuchova in the first singles match on Sunday. Later, Czech Lucie Safarova retired from the match against Slovak Jana Cepelova in the third set, and the Slovaks won the doubles, so the final score is 3-2.

Additional info: You must be expecting me to update you on the Serbia vs. Canada World Group II tie. Well, Serbia won 3-2 after a deciding tight doubles match! By winning all the matches she played, Bojana Jovanovski just confirmed her status of a solid player rushing to the very top, but there is more great news – Serbia has a new tennis prospect lurking, Aleksandra Krunic took our hearts and showed that she is also the one to watch! The 17-year-old Krunic closely lost her singles match against Rebecca Marino on Saturday, but then didn't let the disappointment repeat and earned the victory for Serbia in the decisive doubles, teamed up with Bojana Jovanovski. (photo via Fed Cup)