Elena Dementieva lost in the second round of the Western and Southern Financial Group Women’s Open to fellow Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, while Kim Clijsters avenged her 2009 Cincinnati loss to Dinara Safina and progressed to the third round. Both Dementieva and Clijsters were playing their opening matches.

The third-seeded Dementeiva claimed to have been affected by the humid weather in the days prior to Wednesday’s rain and simply couldn’t get into the game. Pavlyuchenkova, titlist at the Istanbul Cup last week, won 6-1 6-3 and will next play seed No.13 Shahar Peer.

In a battle of two former world No.1s, fourth seed Kim Clijsters beat Dinara Safina 7-5 6-2. Clijsters started her last year’s return to professional tennis at this very tournament and, interestingly, Safina was the one who ended her Cincinnati campaign in the quarterfinals, with quite a similar score: 6-2 7-5.

Maria Sharapova cruised past Andrea Petkovic 6-3 6-1 in the second round, while Vera Zvonareva survived the encounter with Maria Kirilenko, eventually winning 7-5 2-6 7-6(2). Second seed Caroline Wozniacki had no trouble defeating Sybille Bammer 6-0 6-2. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

The word is out that Elena Dementieva could skip Wimbledon due to the leg injury – a torn calf muscle – troubling her since Roland Garros, more precisely since the second round against Anabel Medina Garrigues. Dementieva was playing the Grand Slam with the injury and reached the semifinal during which she had to withdraw after losing the first set 7-6(3) to eventual champion Francesca Schiavone.

The Russian is not playing the AEGON International this week because of the injury and is still uncertain about her participation at Wimbledon. World No.5 Dementieva has played 46 straight Grand Slams, so in case she really misses Wimbledon we will have every right to get really concerned. (source: Forty Deuce, photo: sr_cranks)

Grand Slams are the places where tennis players want to look their best and sponsors want to use the opportunity of huge publicity to market their products. Let's have a look at what women's tennis stars are sporting during one such event, Roland Garros 2010 in Paris.

Venus Williams raised many eyebrows by her lingerie-like black dress. But the dress raises all the eyebrows when in action!

Sorana Cirstea lost on Day one to Svetlana Kuznetsova, but her adidas dress can win all the awards, if you asked me. Just like Ana Ivanovic's.

Bethanie Mattek-Sands is wearing her cool tube socks and looks sporty. Well, Venus took Bethanie's role of ball boy distractor. Caroline Wozniacki, nice dress but nothing new, really nothing. Read more »

Second seed Elena Dementieva suffered her third loss in five matches of the European clay season, falling to Bulgarian qualifier Tsvetana Pironkova at the Polsat Warsaw Open. Maria Sharapova’s warm-up for the French Open is doing good, as the Russian lost only three games to advance at the Internationaux de Strasbourg, another tournament played this week.

Dementieva lost her second-round match at the Premier-level event to the world No.100 Pironkova 7-5 4-6 6-4 after almost three hours of play. The Russian was twice a break up in the deciding set, but didn’t manage to use that advantage to the full and handed Pironkova her fourth Top 10 win.

Sharapova was made to work in her first match at the International-level event in Strasbourg, but the top seed had a straightforward victory in the second round, defeating qualifier Dia Evtimova 6-3 6-0. Sharapova’s opponent in the quarterfinals will be world No.81 Julia Goerges, who upset No.6 seed Sybille Bammer 6-1 7-6(6). (photo: Stephane Martinache)

I was reluctant to celebrate Ana Ivanovic’s second-round win over ninth seed Victoria Azarenka too much, simply in order not to jinx Ana or put pressure on her (who knows, she might be reading this blog ), but now I can say it: "Woohoo Ana is back!".

The Serb defeated sixth-seeded Elena Dementieva 6-1 7-6(5) and advanced to the quarterfinals of the Internazionali BNL d’Italia. I was watching just livescores (don't ask me why), but I am pretty sure Ivanovic didn’t have much trouble in the first set. Actually, in that first set Dementieva didn’t hold serve once and as the result shows won only one game.

The second set was longer and unpredictable. The first four games were breaks of serve, but then they both held serve until 6-6 and tiebreak which Ivanovic won 7-5.

This is Ivanovic’s first victory over Dementieva in their five meetings. Her next opponent on clay in Rome will be seed No.14 Nadia Petrova. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

A lot of you like to know what our favorite players will be wearing at majors ahead of us, and here's what a poster over at Tennis Forum says will be Elena Dementieva's dresses for the tournaments to come: the first image in this post is showing the Russian's dresses planned for Roland Garros 2010, the white one is for Wimbledon, and the third image is displaying two dresses intended for the US Open.

I find Dementieva's on-court style predominantly boring and conservative, even though none of her dresses can be considered ugly, but these new ones seem much more fresh and modern. Alright, the Wimbledon dress is still that same old Yonex style, but the dresses intended for Roland Garros and the US Open seem to bring a touch of new in Dementieva's look.

Compare these new pieces to all the dresses Dementieva wore last year, and tell me if you share my opinion that we're having an improvement here.

Wildcard Justine Henin advanced to the third round of the Sony Ericsson Open with a 6-3 6-2 victory over world No.6 Elena Dementieva.

The former world No.1 Henin, now ranked 33rd, faced no break points in the first set and broke the fifth-seeded Dementieva three times in the second set to beat the Russian once again this year, after their second-round encounter at the Australian Open.

The win over a strong players such as Dementieva is important for Henin who is still building up her comeback, since she lost early at her last tournament (Indian Wells) and has been working hard since then.

The 27-year-old Henin will play seed No.26 Dominika Cibulkova in the third round. (photo: Esther Lim)

The annual Sony Ericsson WTA Tour Player Awards were announced in Miami on Wednesday and seven players received the honor for their achievements during 2009.

World No.1 Serena Williams won her third Tour's Player of the Year award and, together with her sister Venus Williams, the Doubles Team of the Year award. In addition, they got the most votes by fans that voted online and have been honored with Fan Favorite Doubles Team of the Year award. Fan Favorite Singles Player for the Year went to the hands of Elena Dementieva.

Most Improved Player was won by Belgian Yanina Wickmayer, while her compatriot Kim Clijsters picked up Comeback Player of the Year award and her seventh Karen Krantzcke Sportsmanship Award, recognizing her conduct, attitude and fair play.

Melanie Oudin is the Newcomer of the Year, while Liezel Huber has been honored by the Player Service Award for the fourth time.

Here you can remind yourselves of the winners for the year 2008.

Additional information: Players voted on their favorite tournaments, and the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells came out as the favorite Premier event, while the Abierto Mexicano TELCEL in Acapulco is players' favorite International event. (source: Sony Ericsson WTA Tour)

Russia’s Alisa Kleybanova overcame both a rain delay and top-seeded compatriot Elena Dementieva to win her first WTA title at the Malaysian Open in Kuala Lumpur.

The fourth-seeded Kleybanova survived some tough matches prior to the final, but in the title match she dominated one of the best players at the moment and cruised to a 6-3 6-2 victory.

Prior to the clash with heavy-hitting world No.29 Kleybanova, the seventh-ranked Dementieva hadn’t dropped a set in Kuala Lumpur and actually lost only an average of less than two games per set.

Before the 2010 Malaysian Open, Kleybanova’s best career singles results were semifinal finishes at Fès, Toronto and Moscow. (photo AP via Yahoo)

China’s Li Na, who has risen to No.10 in the rankings after reaching the Australian Open semifinals, lost 6-1 5-7 6-2 to Germany’s Tatjana Malek in the first round of the inaugural Malaysian Open.

Chinese first ever Top-10 women’s tennis player and second seed in Kuala Lumpur, converted all three of her break points, but lost her own serve three times and world No.81 Malek thus scored her first Top 10 win. Li’s compatriot Zheng Jie, seed No.3, advanced to the second round by beating qualifier Elena Bovina 6-4 6-3.

Top-seeded Elena Dementieva progressed to the second round. The Russian defeated Ekaterina Bychkova 6-2 6-1, in a less straightforward match than the score suggests. Interestingly, Dementieva’s next opponent will be young Serbian star Bojana Jovanovski, who you remember was jury member here on Women’s Tennis Blog when we held the contest to award one of our readers with the racquet signed by Justine Henin. Good luck, Bojana! (photo: chascow)