Today at the China Open we had action in the second and third round. Second seed Maria Sharapova was successful in the second round, cruising past Sorana Cirstea 6-2 6-2, and will next face Polona Hercog, who climbed back from a 5-1 deficit in the third set against Ekaterina Makarova. As for the battles for the quarterfinal spot, defending champion Agnieszka Radwanska, seeded third, and seed No.9 Marion Bartoli came through, while the top Serbian sisters both went out in straight sets.

Agnieszka Radwanska needed three sets and overcame six drops of serve to get past qualifier Lourdes Dominguez Lino 2-6 6-1 6-4 and reach the quarterfinals where she will face a Chinese player – either Li Na or Peng Shuai.

For the second week in a row at a Premier-level event, Marion Bartoli defeats Julia Goerges. In the previous round, Goerges scored a great win against Sam Stosur, but when facing Bartoli she again lost, this time 6-3 7-6(2).

The match between seed No.11 Ana Ivanovic and Romina Oprandi was steady until 3-3 in the first set, but the former world No.1 lost her service game then and slowly but surely she saw herself losing, piling up unforced errors and bad serves. Jelena Jankovic put up a bigger challenge to her opponent, Carla Suarez Navarro, but she wasted a 5-2 lead in the first set and held no service games in the second set (she won just 25% of points on her serve) to lose 7-5 6-4.

So far only one China Open quarterfinal pair is determined: Marion Bartoli vs. Carla Suarez Navarro. The rest will be known after Thursday's matches. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

I've been writing about women's tennis for five and a half years and this is by far the busiest period regarding wedding/hookup/breakup news. In just a period of a week we had the wedding of Iveta Benesova and Jurgen Melzer, announcement of Justine Henin's pregnancy and spottings of Serena and Venus Williams with new boyfriends. Also, just three weeks ago we learned about Maria Sharapova's called-off engagement to Sasha Vujacic, and now we're hearing that Jelena Jankovic ended her four-year relationship with Mladjan Janovic for pretty much the same reasons as Sharapova's – career obligations drew them apart.

Jankovic and the handsome Montenegrin waterpolo player met at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, more precisely in McDonald's, and have since been in a stable relationship, at least according to the information that reached the media, but the fact that Jankovic is traveling the world playing tennis and Janovic is usually in Italy where he plays for Savona has finally taken its toll. The split happened several months ago and it was amicable.

According to a Serbian source, Mladjan spent his summer in Kotor, Montenegro, where Jelena used to be a regular, even before she met him, but this year Jelena didn't visit the seaside town and Mladjan was seen in the arms of another woman.

Related articles:

• November 2011: Jelena Jankovic and Mladjan Janovic still enjoying relationship bliss
• January 2009: Jelena Jankovic and her boyfriend kissing and partying for New Year
• January 2009: JJ and Mladjan celebrating New Year together
• October 2008: JJ and Mladjan seen in Belgrade
• September 2008: Jankovic has a new boyfriend

As expected, we enjoyed the concurrent Grand Slam sort-of success of the Serbian sisters for a short time. Second seed Agnieszka Radwanska was a big obstacle for Jelena Jankovic this time, even though the Pole is past the second round at the US Open for the first time in four years, while even before that her results couldn’t match Jankovic’s semis here in 2006, quarterfinals in 2007 and final in 2008. Those days are long gone, though, and today Radwanska converted six of seven break opportunities to eliminate the former world No.1 in straight sets, 6-3 7-5. Let’s see what Ana Ivanovic will do tonight against Sloane Stephens. Read more »

Not a bad day for Serbian tennis. Even though young Serbian prospect Bojana Jovanovski fell in two tiebreaks in a courageous fight against Dominika Cibulkova in the second round of the US Open, Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic are progressing little by little.

After beating Elina Svitolina 6-3 6-2 in the first round, the 12th-seeded Ivanovic was dictating her second-round match against Sofia Arvidsson, comfortably taking out the Swede 6-2 6-2. Ivanovic took the first set in 29 minutes, fending off all six break points that Arvidsson earned. Clearly, the match depended on Ivanovic and her ability to avoid unforced errors in her attacking game. In the second set Arvidsson did break Ivanovic's serve two times, but she couldn't neutralize the Serb's 4-0 initial lead. In the end, Ivanovic hit 39 winners to Arvidsson's just 7, while in the unforced errors department Ivanovic's outcome was 23 to Arvidsson's 9. Read more »

Third seed and four-time defending champion Caroline Wozniacki advanced to the semifinals of the New Haven Open at Yale with a 6-2 6-1 victory over sixth seed Dominika Cibulkova, but the Dane's future at her perfect tournament could be affected by a sharp pain in her right knee that troubled her during the quarterfinal.

However, Wozniacki was not the only one affected by the injury, Cibulkova was also distracted by it, especially by Wozniacki calling the physio during Cibulkova's service game:

I was paying too much attention to her. When you ask for a physio like this, I was serving, it was my game, it was during the game, it doesn’t happen often. When you do it, it has to be serious. You really either cannot move or you cannot continue or something like that.

Should Wozniacki give up the chance to become only the fourth WTA to win five consecutive titles at a single tournament in order to save herself for the US Open? There still are no news on her decision, but she did say that risking a long-term injury is not an option. Read more »