World No.1 Victoria Azarenka is on a huge roll this year, but will the soon-to-be Top 15 player Angelique Kerber be able to stop her in their first ever encounter? Our guest poster Omair is looking into the matter.

The first Indian Wells semifinal pits Victoria Azarenka, the shrieka and the streaka, against fast-rising German, Angelique Kerber, who has shown that she has the nerves of iron after her first two matches at Indian Wells and who holds the third most match wins this season, after Azarenka and Agnieszka Radwanska.

Azarenka is 21-0 so far this year, while Kerber is 19-4 this year. The pair has never met before, both had straight sets wins over their opponents in the quarterfinal matches. Let's have a look at their path to the semifinal.

Azarenka nearly lost her opener against Mona Barthel, but since then has not lost more than three games in a set, and has only lost her serve four times in her previous three matches. Azarenka has matched her previous best showing here at Indian Wells – 2009 when she lost in the semis to Vera Zvonareva, who went on to win the title.

Was Kerber's road to the semis full of roses or full of thorns? Read more »

At the Qatar Total Open, in an all-German first-round encounter between fresh first-time WTA titlist Angelique Kerber and ninth seed Sabine Lisicki, the newer German force took charge, overcame stomach problems, came back from a set down and upset her friend Lisicki 4-6 6-4 6-1. Kerber believes they both played a great match, while Lisicki finds she hadn't committed as many unforced errors in the past ten tournaments she played. Just to mention, the Paris title rose Kerber from No.27 to No.22 in the rankings this week.

Seed No.15 Daniela Hantuchova, who just like Kerber won a WTA title over the weekend, is out of the Qatar Total Open in Doha, having wasted a one-set lead and then falling in the third-set tiebreaker to Simona Halep 3-6 6-2 7-6(4). Romania's Halep overcame a leg injury, and with an aggressive baseline game and good tiebreak clinched one of the biggest victories of her career.

Later in the day, Flavia Pennetta took out eleventh seed Dominika Cibulkova 6-3 2-6 7-5. Pennetta won two points more than Cibulkova and took the victory.

Defending champion at the tournament is Vera Zvonareva, who will after a first-round bye play Monica Niculescu in the second round. Last week at Pattaya, Zvonareva retired from her quarterfinal in the third set against Sorana Cirstea with a left hip injury. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

The 27th-ranked Angelique Kerber scored her first Top 10, more precisely a Top 5, victory against top seed Maria Sharapova in the quarterfinals of the Open GDF Suez, and after beating Yanina Wickmayer in the semis 6-7(2) 6-3 6-4, Kerber completed the career milestone week by overcoming second seed and home force Marion Bartoli in the final to win her first title on the WTA Tour. It's not that the early rounds were easy for the ninth-seeded Kerber. First she faced an always-tricky Lucie Safarova and in the second round Monica Niculescu pushed her to 6-3 4-6 6-3.

Bartoli is world No.7, so the victory in the title match is Kerber's second against a Top 10 player. But it wasn't a simple task, as the two fought for two hours and 39 minutes until Kerber won 7-6(3) 5-7 6-3. The first set contained four service breaks, two on each side, and Bartoli was 100% successful on break point conversions, but Kerber came out strong and took the set in a tiebreak. The German was on a roll until 5-2 in the second set, when Bartoli took charge and won five straight games to take the match to the third set. Kerber then again established a lead and this time she kept it alive until the final point to her advantage. (photo: Upali Wickramasinghe)