This is hilarious! WTA players have no clear idea about who the Top 5 players in the rankings are, and to make things worse, not even world No.3 Agnieszka Radwanska knows who is ranked just below her! They are all pretty good with the Top 3, but the Top 5, hmmm, too difficult. Interestingly, they all think that Li Na is in the Top 5.

Elena Bovina guesses that Jelena Jankovic is No.5, and she's fallen out of the Top 20! Read more »

Daniela Hantuchova is building up on her Pattaya Open title of two weeks ago, recording her second Top 10 win of the month with a 4-6 6-1 6-2 upset of world No.9 Victoria Azarenka in the first round of the Qatar Ladies Open. En route to winning the Pattaya Open, Hantuchova's first throphy in almost four years, the Slovakian defeated third-ranked Vera Zvonareva.

Hantuchova actually followed up her title run in Thailand with a first-round loss to Anna Chakvetadze in Dubai, but today against the sixth-seeded Azarenka, despite losing the marathon 68-minute first set, Hantuchova rebounded and capitalized on Azarenka’s errors to win the next two sets with ease. Also, Hantuchova hit nine aces, compared to Azarenka’s zero. Final score: 4-6 6-1 6-2.

Svetlana Kuznetsova fell to 0-3 in Dubai finals over the weekend and now she lost in the first round of the Qatar Ladies Open to seed No.8 Shahar Peer, 6-2 6-4.

As you’re expecting from me, I’ll give special attention to Serbian players’ performance. As expected, fifth seed Jelena Jankovic defeated wildcard Fatma Al Nabhani, 6-1 6-3. The 19-year-old Al Nabhani is Oman’s only ranked player. She’s world No.426. Unfortunately, Bojana Jovanovski lost to wildcard Sania Mirza, 6-2 7-5. I was really hoping Jovanovski would manage to defeat Mirza, especially because she scored some big victories to enter the draw, over the well-known players of Kateryna Bondarenko and Urszula Radwanska.

Other players victorious on Tuesday in Doha include: Flavia Pennetta, Dominika Cibulkova, Peng Shuai, Vera Dushevina and Klara Zakopalova. (photos: Johan Rivera)

As you know, Women's Tennis Blog is currently on vacation, but I've prepared a number of interesting posts to keep you entertained while I'm away. Even though I won't be updating about tennis happenings in Brisbane, Auckland, Sydney and Hobart, I will give you a bunch of great posts and the first in the series is the compilation of photos of top women's tennis players and their mothers. Enjoy!

Let's start with Caroline Wozniacki and her mother, Anna Wozniacki. Caroline is coached by her father, Piotr, who played professional soccer, but her mother was also an athlete, having played on the Polish women's national volleyball team.

Vera Zvonareva's mother Nataliya Bykova played field hockey and was a bronze medalist at the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. You can read a very nice story Nataliya herself told a magazine about Vera's early life and the beginnings of her tennis career.

Kim Clijsters' mother is Els Vandecaetsbeek (the blond woman in the picture), a former national gymnastics champion. Kim claims to have inherited gymnast's flexibility from her mother. Read more »

The controversy hit celebrity couple of Indian tennis star Sania Mirza and Pakistani cricket captain Shoaib Malik exchanged wedding vows on Monday, April 12th, three days prior to the date initially planned.

The 23-year-old bride wore a beautiful red sari that her mother wore at her wedding 25 years ago, while the 28-year-old groom wore a black tunic. The ceremony took place at the Taj Krishna Hotel in Mirza's hometown of Hyderabad, in the southern India.

The pairing has been controversial for too many reasons:

1)    Mirza and Malik come from different countries that don’t have the best relations
2)    Mirza had ended her previous engagement just months before announcing her new future husband
3)    Mirza’s new partner happened to have had a valid marriage established over the phone eight years ago, and he divorced his first wife just a few days ago in order to be able to marry Mirza
4)    Mirza and Malik are one of the biggest sports celebrities in the region

The couple will live in Dubai, where Malik has a residence.

It wasn’t enough that Indian tennis star Sania Mirza announced her new marriage only a couple of months after separating from her previous fiancé, and it wasn’t enough that her new love is from Pakistan which has tricky relations with India, but the story had to become even more intriguing with suspicions that her future husband Shoaib Malik might already be married.

Now you’re thinking it’s unbelievable, but wait, it’s getting even better. The 28-year-old Malik got married over the phone in 2002, to a woman he met on the Internet and saw only in a photograph! The woman’s name is Ayesha Siddiqui, and she is from Hyderabad, the hometown of Sania Mirza.

"I was made to believe the girl in the photograph was the one I was speaking to," Malik said about his Internet relationship. "The truth is, I haven't, to this day, met the girl in the photographs Ayesha sent me."

Here’s what the 23-year-old Sania Mirza, who should marry Malik in less than 15 days, said about the bizarre situation: "I know, we know what the truth is and it will come out and we believe in justice".

Police are now conducting investigation because Siddiqui’s family is claiming that Malik is already married to her. It is still not known whether his marriage is legally valid under Islamic law.

I suppose everything will end up fine for Mirza. All the things in her life always have to go through that dramatic stage. (source: BBC, photo: Stephane Martinache)