Maria Sharapova rebounded from her chaotic fourth-round match and eased past dangerous Kaia Kanepi 6-2 6-3 to reach her third career Roland Garros semifinals where she will face Petra Kvitova for a chance to reclaim the top ranking. Moreover, the Russian is now only two wins away from completing a career slam, having already lifted the trophy at Wimbledon in 2004, the US Open in 2006 and the Australian Open in 2008. The fact that she's 3-2 against Kvitova and 2-0 this season against the Czech, including the 2012 Stuttgart semifinals on clay, additionally speaks in her advantage.

After the tricky match against Klara Zakopalova that lasted three hours and 11 minutes and featured 21 breaks of serve in 30 games, the second-seeded Sharapova continued in the fashion of her first three rounds, straightforwardly finishing the job against the 23rd-seeded Kanepi in 74 minutes. Read more »

Every Grand Slam is a unique opportunity for tennis fashion to step up and shine in the best light, so here at Women's Tennis Blog I always compile a collage of WTA photos to show the variety of styles in one place. For this French Open I played with movie making a bit and made this slideshow video. I hope you like it! Of course, don't forget to click the YouTube "Like" button if you do!

I included a lot of brands in the video, so that you get as comprehensive picture as possible. You can see players wearing Nike, Adidas,  Lotto, Reebok, Anta, Lacoste, Asics, Under Armour, EleVen, Fila and Adidas by Stella McCartney.

As you'll notice in the video, my pick for the best look of the 2012 French Open is Serena Williams, even though her display of the three-shade green Nike dress lasted for just one match (a long and exciting one, though). Also perfect was Ana Ivanovic and all the others who sported the Adidas Adizero style in lime and core energy.

Who's on your best-dressed list?

It's awesome being regular with these fashion overviews, so now we can easily refer to the past and compare. Check out Roland Garros designs in the past two years.

• 2011: Spring tennis fashion Roland Garros edition
• 2010: Roland Garros fashion radar – WTA outfits

Also, compare the claycourt looks with the styles sported on the blue courts in the Australian sun at Melbourne 2012.

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Will it be red hot Maria Sharapova or Serena Williams? Once clumsy on clay, Sharapova is now a definite favorite for the Roland Garros trophy. With Stuttgart and Rome titles this season, Sharapova has raised her record in clay finals to 5-0 and she's 11-0 on dirt this season. Also, four of her last five titles have come on clay. The 2002 French Open champion Serena is on a 17-match winning streak on clay, the second best clay streak this century, and even though she withdrew in the semifinals of Rome, she's expected to be healthy for Roland Garros. Just like Sharapova, Serena won two titles on clay this year, in Charleston and Madrid.

World number one Victoria Azarenka has had a stellar season, with a 35-3 win-loss record, four titles, including her first Grand Slam at the Australian Open, and two finals in eight tournaments she played in 2012. As for the clay season, she played the finals of Stuttgart and Madrid and beat three former French Open champions on the way (Svetlana Kuznetsova, Ana Ivanovic and Li Na) before losing to the hottest players of the moment, to Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova. Azarenka then withdrew from Rome after comfortably winning her opener, saying that she didn't even want to enter the tournament in the first place, but was forced by the pressure of WTA rules. This will be the first time Azarenka is top seed at a Grand Slam. Read more »

Third seed Petra Kvitova’s Madrid Open title defense was stopped already in the second round and the responsible is qualifier Lucie Hradecka, Kvitova’s good friend and countrywoman, who won the match 6-4 6-3 to score her first Top 10 victory.

Even though officially this is the first time that Hradecka beats Kvitova, Hradecka revealed that she had defeated her before at the end of last year in some club matches, while they’ve also played a lot of sparring games for Fed Cup.

The world No.105 Hradecka’s plan to concentrate on her serve worked well, and even though she had 4% less points won on first serve, in the department of points won on second serve she was much better than Kvitova – 54% to Kvitova’s 25%. In addition, she was much more successful in conversion of break points, taking Kvitova’s serve a total of five times.

Hradecka, whose three of four WTA runner-up finishes came on clay, will play Ekaterina Makarova in the third round, after the Russian upset compatriot Maria Kirilenko 6-4 6-4.

Also in the second round, fourth seed and new world No.3 Agnieszka Radwanska ended Sara Errani’s 16-match claycourt winning streak quickly, 6-0 6-1. Radwanska will next face Roberta Vinci who also didn’t waste time in the second round, eliminating Yanina Wickmayer 6-1 6-2.

In the third round, top seed Victoria Azarenka beat seed No.13 Ana Ivanovic 6-4 6-4, eighth seed Li Na conquered seed No.12 Angelique Kerber 7-5 6-4, and fifth seed Samantha Stosur won over Petka Cetkovska 6-3 6-2. (photo: Ralf Reinecke)

Nine percent break point conversion rate, that's what best describes Petra Kvitova's performance in the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix semifinal against Maria Sharapova. In the end, Sharapova won just two points more than her opponent and advanced to her fourth final of the season with a 6-4 7-6(3) victory.

Whether the Russian will win her first title of 2012 will be determined in the final against top seed Victoria Azarenka, who cruised past Agnieszka Radwanska 6-1 6-3, which is her fifth victory over the Pole this year (actually, Radwanska hasn't lost to anyone else this season).

In the first set, at 2-2 Sharapova led 40-0 on Kvitova's serve, and even though the Czech didn't give the game away easily, Sharapova used her fourth break opportunity to earn a crucial break of the set which she eventually won 6-4.

The second set was even steadier result-wise, as the first break of serve happened in the eleventh game. But what was frustrating for the third-seeded Kvitova was that she had eight break opportunities until 5-5, including a set point, while Sharapova had none, and after saving that set point and winning her service game, in the eleventh game Sharapova broke Kvitova's serve. It wasn't over, though. Serving for the match, the second-seeded Sharapova needed to fend off more break opportunities and Kvitova finally converted her 11th one to force a tiebreak. The momentum was Sharapova's still, and she ended Kvitova's 27 indoor match winning streak.

By the way, notice that the semifinals of Stuttgart featured the top four ranked players. (photo: Ralf Reinecke)