At the age of 27, Gisela Dulko retires from professional tennis with a letter posted on WTA Tour's official website. The most popular WTA player from Argentina, with prominent singles career and extraordinary doubles career, has changed her priorities in life and tennis will no longer be her focus of attention.

The reason why I have decided to retire from tennis is because I now have other priorities on which I want to focus. As a result, I don't have the same desire or ability to make the sacrifices which are necessary to live the life of a tennis professional.

Family life is probably on top of her list now. In July 2011, Dulko married 26-year-old Argentine footballer Fernando Gago. Their relationship was mostly long-distance, but now they will surely have more time for each other. Read more »

Flavia Pennetta, the first Italian Top 10 player and the first one from her country to rank No.1 in either singles or doubles, has undergone a successful right wrist surgery and is now taking her time to rest before resuming hitting in November and preparing for a comeback next season.

The injury struck in April, forced Pennetta to skip Stuttgart and Madrid and retire from her Rome quarterfinal against Serena Williams. Then she played Roland Garros, 's-Hertogenbosch, Wimbledon and the Olympics, before retiring in her Montreal opener at 1-4 in the first set and missing the subsequent tournaments, including the US Open where she reached all her three Grand Slam quarterfinals.

However, no one is irreplaceable. There was an all-Italian quarterfinal at the US Open between good friends and doubles partners Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci and Italy got its first US Open semifinalist in the Open Era. (source: WTA Tour, photo: Tennis Buzz)

The US Open starts in six days and so far we know that four WTA players will not participate: Flavia Pennetta of Italy, the 2004 US Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia, Kaia Kanepi of Estonia and Elena Baltacha of Great Britain. The reasons of their withdrawals have not been stated at the official US Open website, but we know that Pennetta is not playing this week's New Haven due to a right wrist injury, Kuznetsova due to a right knee injury, Kanepi is out with a bilateral Achilles injury, while Baltacha is putting a stop to her career in order to undergo a foot surgery. Read more »

Defending champion Maria Sharapova is through to the semifinals of the Internazionali BNL d'Italia, beating wildcard Venus Williams 6-4 6-3 in the final eight. After a closely-fought first set, the Russian second seed broke Venus' serve for a 5-4 lead, and in the following game saved two break points before taking the set. The second set Sharapova started by establishing a 2-0 lead, and even though Venus leveled at 2-all, the American didn't give much more resistance. Besides confidently holding one more service game, the rest of the set was Sharapova's and Venus even ended the match with a double fault. Sharapova's semifinal opponent will be Petra Kvitova or Angelique Kerber.

Earlier in the quarterfinals, Serena Williams was on court for just 28 minutes, as Flavia Pennetta retired with a right wrist injury while trailing 4-0. Williams' claycourt winning streak has mounted to 17 matches, and the American, who has this spring won on the green clay of Charleston and the blue clay of Madrid, confidently stated: "I've played on ice and on water. I can play on any surface."

Serena's opponent in the semifinals will be French Open champion Li Na of China, who stormed to a 6-1 4-0 lead against Dominika Cibulkova, before the Slovak recovered to take the second set to a tiebreak. Still, Li won 6-1 7-6 (4) and is now looking for her second victory over Serena in their seventh meeting. (photo courtesy of Francesca Moscatelli)

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)