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)

A little more than a week ago, at the Mutua Madrilena Madrid Open, Maria Sharapova lost the first match of her return from elbow injury. The Russian's her next appearance, which was today at the Strasbourg International, brought the Russian a much needed victory, and her first one since March and Indian Wells.

The top-seeded Sharapova fought for two hours and 14 minutes to defeat world No.67 Regina Kulikova 6-3 3-6 6-1 and advance to the second round of the $220,000 event in France.

"Regina has a similar game to mine – big first serve, hits pretty big and attacks. I played well enough to win. It was a high-quality match, especially for a first round," said three-time Grand Slam champion Sharapova, who is hoping to use the Strasbourg tournament to tune up for the French Open. (source: BBC, photo: Stephane Martinache)

Mutua Madrilena Madrid Open was Maria Sharapova’s first appearance at the Premier Mandatory event, as well as her first tournament since pulling out of Indian Wells in March, and it was cut short by Lucie Safarova.

Safarova, who beat world number two Caroline Wozniacki in Stuttgart last month, charged into a 4-0 lead in the first set, and even though Sharapova leveled at 4-4, Safarova took the next two games and won the set. The second set went with serve until Safarova took one break and it was all she needed to win the set and match. Final score: 6-4 6-3.

The opening-round meeting of Sharapova and Safarova in Madrid was also their first career meeting.

Sharapova’s first tournament on clay this season didn’t start well, but the Russian is heading to Strasbourg to get more practice on clay before Roland Garros. (photo: sr_cranks)

Not much is happening in the tennis world today, so I’ll use the opportunity to post one more article that shows women’s tennis players when they were kids. Yesterday we featured little Amelie Mauresmo, and today I am sharing with you a part of the match between Russia’s Maria Sharapova and China’s Peng Shuai from the 2000 final of the junior clay-court tournament Torneo dell’Avvenire in Italy.

Sharapova was 13 years old, while Peng was 14. Sharapova lost the final 6-1 6-2, but only four years later she won Wimbledon, then the next year she reached the No.1 ranking, and two more Grand Slam titles followed in her career (her total of singles WTA titles is 21). Peng, however, has no singles titles on the WTA Tour to this day, and her highest ranking was No.31. Sharapova and Peng are currently tied at 1-1 in their head-to-head statistics.

For our complete collection of pictures and videos of women’s tennis players when they were still children, visit this page.

Seed No.18 Zheng Jie overcame tenth seed Maria Sharapova 6-3 2-6 6-3 after two hours and 43 minutes of topsy-turvy marathon in the third round of the BNP Paribas Open.

Sharapova made 14 double faults, 62 unforced errors and was broken seven times during the match. Zheng broke Sharapova's serve three times in the first set, then the Russian leveled after the second set which lasted one hour and eight minutes, and finally, Zheng came back from 3-1 down in the decider to win the match.

"She's like a ball machine. She hits a lot of balls back, hits them hard and deep. I should have done a much better job on her serve because that is definitely one of her weaker parts of the game," said the world No.13 Sharapova, who received treatment for her right elbow during the match.

The 26-year-old Chinese, a surprise semifinalist at this year's Australian Open, will next play Australian wildcard Alicia Molik. (source: Reuters, photo: Nick Bollettieri)