Seed No.18 Flavia Pennetta was the highest seed to fall on the first day of the 2011 French Open. The Italian's errors piled up and despite winning the second set and saving four match points, she lost to American Varvara Lepchenko and her mummified knees 6-3 2-6 6-3. Lepchenko's next opponent will be fellow American, Bethanie Mattek Sands, who toughed it out against Arantxa Parra Santonja (as for Bethanie's outfit, well, it's disappointingly conservative this time). Read more »

The WTA calendar and the United States have a new event – the International-level tournament called the Mid-Atlantic Women's Tennis Championships. It will take place from July 25th to July 31st and will be held at the Tennis Center at College Park, Washington DC.

Israeli Shahar Peer will headline the field this year. Also participating will be Lucie Safarova, former No.4 Jelena Dokic and Americans Melanie Oudin and Sloane Stephens.

The official website of the tournament is www.midatlanticwtc.com, though it's not rich in information yet.

The WTA Tour interviewed a lot of players about their favorite songs at the moment and they got very colorful answers. From Shahar Peer who doesn't listen to music, Kim Clijsters who is "getting older" and listens to the same CDs over and over again, doubles partners Flavia Pennetta and Gisela Dulko who not surprisingly love the same song, JJ who has no idea, but later admits she's haunted by Katy Perry's "Fireworks", and the others who listen from U2, Mark Ronson and Celine Dion to the latest Lady Gaga and Rihanna hits.

Check out the fun video yourself:

Kim Clijsters may have taken the No.1 ranking from Caroline Wozniacki, but only a week later the 20-year-old Dane ensured her return to the very top. Probably a week wasn’t enough for Wozniacki to rest from all the talks about how she doesn’t deserve the position because she hasn’t won a Grand Slam, but like it or not, she’ll be spending her 19th week at No.1. That’s a pretty long reign, I would say. Clijsters, the winner of 41 singles titles including four Grand Slams, has held the top spot for 20 weeks in her career (in four different periods and over the course of eight years). Wozniacki is extremely close to that number even though she first became No.1 in October 2010, less than half a year ago. Read more »

As our reader Brenda from Argentina asked for my overview of the 2011 Australian Open tennis fashion, here it is – a little bit of every brand, a little bit of good and bad.

Let's not save the best for the last. Let's start with by far the biggest fashion attention-grabber of the tournament – Venus Williams. The American played three matches (actually two, but she started her third one) and showcased the same number of outfits. The following one is the unofficial ugliest tennis outfit of the decade.

Venus, a graduate in fashion design and the person behind clothing line EleVen, made the outfits herself.

Believe it or not, Venus' dresses, or whatever they can be called, have gained a fan base. Whoever likes Venus' latest EleVen dresses, please leave a comment! I'm sure the world would love to hear your reasoning.

I'd like to continue with Nadia Petrova, the representative of Ellesse. Petrova has also had some colorful and imaginative styles (remember her US Open 2010 outfit that had stripes of all the possible colors?). There might be sound logic behind Petrova's support of EleVen.

Another fashion favorite is always Aravane Rezai. Even though this time her family drama attracted more attention than her dress, the Frenchwoman stayed faithful to the touch of crazy uniqueness. Although, she definitely can do better!

Let's move on to adidas – plenty of it. Read more »

Serbian teenager Bojana Jovanovski scored her first Top 10 victory at the China Open and it was against none other than countrywoman Jelena Jankovic – former world number one, former champion and third seed this year. However, one more big win was too much for the 93rd-ranked Jovanovski as she won only three games against world No.18 Shahar Peer in the third round. The match lasted 59 minutes and ended with score 6-1 6-2.

In the first set Jovanovski converted one of six break points she had, but in the second set she had no such opportunities. Peer on the other hand broke Jovanovski's service five times during the match.

Despite this third round loss, Jovanovski can be glad that she eventually decided not to skip the China Open after a string of disappointing results. The Serbian No.3 made headlines with the biggest victory of her career here and even earned a feature in the well-known Sony Ericsson WTA Tour's "Getting to know… ". The most interesting thing I got to know from the article was that Jovanovski would like to have a serve of Ana Ivanovic (including the ball toss?) and the movement of Jelena Jankovic. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

Here’s a nice eight-minute video about Shahar Peer and her life in Israel. Her mother and father are talking about Shahar’s career and how the fact that she’s Israeli influenced it (of course, they’re referring to Dubai). You also get to see Shahar’s grandmother recalling her six months in the Auschwitz concentration camp and the video coverage of the annual March of the Living.

World No.18 Shahar Peer is awaiting her fourth round meeting with top-ranked Serena Williams at the French Open. Shahar defeated Nuria Llagostera Vives in the first round, Bethanie Mattek-Sands in the second, and seed No.13 Marion Bartoli in the third. (via Forty Deuce)

The last match of today’s play at the $700,000 Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart was an upset of defending champion Svetlana Kuznetsova. The third-seeded Russian lost to China's Li Na 6-3 7-5 in the second round.

The only other second-round match that took place on Wednesday happened to be an upset as well, with unseeded Shahar Peer of Israel defeating fifth seed Agnieszka Radwanska 6-3 6-7(4) 6-2. Peer had a match point in the second set, but wrapped up victory in the third to upset the Pole who had added to the slump of Ana Ivanovic in the first round.

No.4 seed Jelena Jankovic, No.6 seed Victoria Azarenka, No.7 seed Samantha Stosur, No.8 seed Yanina Wickmayer and unseeded wildcard Justine Henin were all victorious in their first-round matches.

Kuznetsova’s opponent in the last year’s Stuttgart final, Dinara Safina, is in action on Thursday and will play her first match since the Australian Open. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

The biggest Israeli tennis star Shahar Peer led the annual March of the Living in Poland on Monday to pay tribute to the victims of the Auschwitz concentration camp and to tell the world that "Denying History Will Lead to its Repetition."

Peer was accompanied by her grandmother, a survivor of Auschwitz, high officials and 10,000 students from around the world. Israeli Ambassador Zvi Rav-Ner held speech in Hebrew, English and Polish, standing by the biggest reminder of the dreadful events that happened in Auschwitz, the infamous gate with the sign reading "Arbeit Macht Frei," or "Work makes you free" .

Besides being a top-ranked Israeli tennis player, Peer is also famous for crossing boundaries by playing at this year’s tournament in Dubai, under tight security restrictions, thus becoming the first Israeli woman ever to compete in the United Arab Emirates, while last year she was denied visa for that country. To remind you, not only did Peer take part in the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships, but she reached the semifinals of the $2-million tournament. (source: The Jerusalim Post, photos via Tennis Forum)

Venus Williams reached the final of the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships by defeating surprise semifinalist Shahar Peer in the modest surroundings of Court Two, the court of choice because of safety reasons.

Third-seeded Williams defeated Peer 6-1 6-4 amid tight security that surrounded the Israeli all week. Even though Peer’s appearance in Dubai had to be accompanied by her being kept separate from other players, she enjoyed one of the most successful tournaments of her career.

"It was a different experience but a nice one," said world No.22 Peer who upset three seeds on her way to the semis. "I'm sure I will remember this tournament for the rest of my life."

Reigning champion Venus Williams will play fourth seed Victoria Azarenka in the final, as the Belorussian defeated seed No.7 Agnieszka Radwanska 6-3 6-4 in the final four. Williams and Azarenka have met only once so far – two years ago at the Beijing Olympics and the American won that match. (photo by our reader Bobby)