We're having Top 2 WTA players in the final of the Mutua Madrid Open and the No.1 ranking is on the line – if Maria Sharapova wins, she will take the prestigious position from Serena Williams. Moreover, Sharapova is playing the 50th final of her career, in the previous 49 her record was 29-20, while Serena is looking for her 50th title in her 66th final.

A day after surviving Anabel Medina Garrigues in the quarterfinals, Serena won a tight 7-5 6-2 two-setter against Sara Errani, who was twice a break up in the first set, and will now try to become the tenth player in history to win 50 WTA titles, and the only active player to do so. In the following semifinal, Sharapova secured a 6-4 6-3 victory over Ana Ivanovic by winning a close first set and overcoming Ivanovic's initial 2-0 lead in the second set. It's not just any win for the Russian, it's her 500th career win and only seven other active players have achieved the feat, including of course Serena Williams, who leads Sharapova 12-2 in the head-to-head stats, not having lost to her since 2004. (photos: © Neal Trousdale)

Top seed and defending champion Serena Williams recovered from a second-set bagel against clay veteran Anabel Medina Garrigues in the quarterfinals of the Mutua Madrid Open, only her seventh career loss of a set at love, and in the third set she rebounded from 2-4 and later from two points from defeat at 4-5 15-30 to win 6-3 0-6 7-5. Williams' opponent in the semis will be seventh seed and claycourt expert Sara Errani, who beat Ekaterina Makarova 6-4 6-3. Never in their four previous meetings had Errani defeated Williams.

Second seed Maria Sharapova is also through to the semifinals, with a 6-2 6-4 victory over Kaia Kanepi, but if she wants to get the number one ranking she'll have to hang in there and see Serena leave one round earlier than her. Seed No.16 Ana Ivanovic was the last to move into the final four, taking out sixth seed Angelique Kerber 6-3 6-1 in a match that lasted just 57 minutes, thus reinforcing her recent 7-5 7-5 win over the higher ranked German in the Fed Cup. The semifinal of Sharapova and Ivanovic will be a rematch of the last month's indoor clay meeting in the Stuttgart final eight, when Ivanovic lost a three-set marathon and Sharapova went all the way to the title and the Porsche. Sharapova has won the last five matches against Ivanovic, dating back to 2007. (photos: © Neal Trousdale)

Unbeatable Serena Williams recorded her fifteenth match win in a row at the Family Circle Cup in Charleston and her third straight title at the tournament (having previously won it in 2008 and 2012 and not playing in between), by bouncing back from the loss of the first set and beating resurgent Jelena Jankovic in this year's final.

After surviving a game longer than 10 minutes and holding for 2-2 in the first set, Jankovic broke Serena at love and with great defense, precise shots and good serving she managed to steal the set from the powerful Serena, converting both the break opportunities she earned. The momentum then shifted big time, though, as Serena stormed through the second set. Jankovic sort of stopped the surge in the beginning of the third set, holding her serve in the opening game, but two on-the-line winners earned Serena a break in the third game and little by little and on the third match point, she marched on to the title and the $125,000 check. It's crucial to note that in the third set of the encounter, Jankovic had been on the court during the tournament more than twice as long as Serena.

It's redundant to say much about Serena. She's such a force in women's tennis right now that her titles are not even news. The 2013 Charleston title is the 49th in her career and third this season (after Brisbane and Miami). As for JJ, she can be proud of following up her Miami semifinals with the final in Charleston in which she even managed to take a set off Serena. In her post-match speech, Jankovic was satisfied and smiling and said that next time she can only hope that Serena will play a bit worse. True, that's the only way anyone can beat her. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

We've arrived to the final article of our guest blogger Omair's series comparing the very best players of the WTA with their male counterparts. After the introductory and a general article, Omair compared:

• WTA world No.3 Maria Sharapova and ATP world No.3 Andy Murray (note: Sharapova is now No.2)
• WTA world No.2 Victoria Azarenka and ATP world No.2 Roger Federer (note: Azarenka is now No.3)

I started the series to compare the two tours, since media has grown biased towards the WTA: an ATP player playing through injury is appreciated for his commitment to tennis, but a WTA player playing through injury is criticized for poor tennis, grunting is never an issue on the ATP, while it's constantly being talked about on the WTA, questions have been raised regarding the poor quality of WTA. These and a lot of other things have been said about the WTA. Amy Fetherolf, co-founder of "The Changeover", recently wrote a piece about this biased media attitude.

As Marija said in the introduction, in this final article we'll compare Serena Williams and Novak Djokovic so let's see what the numbers are telling us. The categories highlighted in orange go in favor of Serena Williams, while I am confused about the one highlighted in blue.

Serena has been better than Djokovic in almost all the departments. Serena is far ahead of the Serb in the match winning percentage, record against the Top 4 and Top 10 players. Serena also beat two or more Top 10 players in more tournaments than the Serb. Read more »

Serena Williams beat Maria Sharapova for the eleventh straight time in their careers, the streak dating back to 2005, to claim her sixth title at the Sony Open Tennis, which is a record on the WTA Tour, while Sharapova fell to a discouraging 0-5 in Miami finals.

Serena converted all seven of her break opportunities and came back from a set and a break down to overcome Sharapova 4-6 6-3 6-0. From 2-3 in the second set she won ten straight games and became only the fourth woman to win any WTA event six times, joining Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf and Chris Evert.

It was the first time since 2008 that Sharapova won a set against Serena, but the American’s dominance is unstoppable and plus the stats were on her side as she leads all active players for winning percentage when losing the first set, which is now 45.5%. (source: WTA Tour, photo: © Neal Trousdale)