Was Dinara Safina inspired my recent updates of the players' childhood pictures series when I added super cute photos of Samantha Stosur and Sara Errani last week? The Russian shared a number of family pictures on Twitter, including this gorgeous photo of herself. That face expression is so Dinara!

There are also many photos of her elder brother Marat when he was a kid and young photos of their parents, mother Raouza Islanova and father Michail.

Reminder: Three years ago Women's Tennis Blog showed you some photos of little Dinara and her family and also an adorable video of 3-year-old Dinara playing tennis.

Women's Tennis Blog is back from summer vacation! Glad to be back with you and tennis. Thanks for all your emails and comments of support, it's nice to know you've been missed.  Before proceeding with regular reports from the world of women's tennis I would like to take a very quick look on the ten days behind us.

The biggest news was Serena Williams' Stanford title. In only her third tournament after a year-long absence Serena won a Permier-level event beating Maria Sharapova 6-1 6-3, Sabine Lisicki 6-1 6-2 and in the final Marion Bartoli 7-5 6-1. The victory saw Serena rise in the rankings from No.169 to No.79. Serena has once again proved her undeniable quality and silenced much of the tennis world!

Elsewhere, Nadia Petrova won inaugural Citi Open by beating top seed Shahar Peer in the final 7-5 6-2. The Russian entered the tournament as a wildcard and was seeded second. It's her tenth career title and first since 2008. Read more »

Dinara Safina is sick of dealing with her back pain and announced that she doesn’t want to play tennis and has no idea when she will be ready to get back to competition. Interestingly, only three days ago Safina tweeted how her next tournament would be Roland Garros.

The situation has apparently changed and Safina’s statement is pretty illustrative of how tired she is of dealing with injury problems: Read more »

Marine of Tennis Notebook has become a regular contributor to Women's Tennis Blog. Now she's making French Open predictions. Do you agree with her?

As we are nearing Roland Garros, tennis enthusiasts are starting to make first predictions about who has got what it takes to win the title. What is interesting about this debate is that there is some hesitation about who to pick as a favorite. The reason is quite simple: No.1 player in the world has won all kinds of tournaments … apart from a Grand Slam.

When Kim Clijsters became a No.1 in 2003, "a No.1 player without a slam" was a new phenomenon in WTA. Her accomplishment was a beginning of the debate which starts off regularly when someone happens to be (un)lucky enough to make it to the top spot "slamless".

The debate opened again with JJ achieving that, and has become pretty intense during the time when Dinara Safina became No.1. We all know what pressure of expectations and constant criticism did with Safina and even though things changed with the arrival of more self-assured Caroline Wozniacki, many people still frown at the No.1 without a Grand Slam crown.

The question "who is the best player in WTA" has become somewhat difficult to answer and therefore it nowadays produces mixed answers, although people tend to select the same couple of names.

So, who is the best player nowadays and who is the most likely to win Roland Garros 2011?

Here are my picks:

1. Caroline Wozniacki– Her performance has shown that she is a No.1 for a reason. Wozniacki goes far or all the way in most of the events she enters and even in Grand Slams rarely leaves before quarterfinals. Read more »

As Marine of Tennis Notebook promised, she's extended her list of emotional WTA players, based on your suggestions. You're welcome to leave a comment on her guest post.

After the great feedback on the article "Top 5 emotional players in womens tennis", with many of you providing some perfect tips on other potential candidates, I have compiled a follow-up on the previous chart.

Dinara Safina

In any sport pressure of expectations and criticism can either make you or break you. Dinara’s story is unfortunately based on the second scenario. Hot temper runs in Safin family, just look at her older brother Marat who also could put on quite a "show" back in his playing days. Mental resilience is not Safina's strength. Especially her Grand Slam performances had shown how much the pressure can get to her head. Instead of a great triumph at several Grand Slam finals, fans saw her playing an unusually mediocre game after a series of great performances.

Victoria Azarenka

It is nothing more frustrating for the player than to lose a match which they started off in an impressive fashion or were very close to winning. There was a time when no lead was safe in Victoria’s hands and she often ended up in an emotional turmoil because of that. Sometimes venting helped because she raised the level of her performance, but sometimes she just broke a few rackets. Read more »