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).

One more seed was upset on the opening day – No.19 seed Shahar Peer lost to Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez 7-6(4) 6-1. Marinez Sanchez fell from No.33 to No.84 in the rankings after the recent Premier-level Rome tournament, which she surprisingly won last year but exited in the first round this year, thus failing to defend a lot of points. As for her Roland Garros performance, last year she lost in the opening round, while her best results was the third-round showing in 2009. The Spaniard's next opponent will be Rebecca Marino, who needed 57 minutes to win her first career French Open match against Kateryna Bondarenko 6-3 6-3.

Last year's runner-up Samantha Stosur is through, as well as other seeded players: Jelena Jankovic, past champion Svetlana Kuznetsova, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Julia Goerges and Tsvetana Pironkova. They all progressed in straight sets.

I'd like to mention that former Top 5 player Jelena Dokic also played today, but lost to Vera Dushevina in three sets. (photo courtesy of our reader Tony)

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.

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.

The match that was decisive for Wozniacki’s ranking was her encounter with Shahar Peer in the quarterfinals of the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships. The top-seeded Wozniacki avenged her last year’s loss to the Israeli at this tournament with a routine 6-2 6-4 victory. Interestingly, Wozniacki had less break points than Peer, but she obviously converted more of her chances (6 of 8, compared to Shahar’s 3 of 10) and improved to 5-1 against Peer.

Now that we're talking about these two players, I though to share a nice interview from a couple of years ago with Peer interviewing Wozniacki.

Sixth seed Jelena Jankovic will be Wozniacki’s opponent in Dubai semifinals. Jankovic advanced with a 6-3 5-7 7-6(4) win over fourth seed Samantha Stosur.

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.

The I-look-awesome-in-everything Maria Kirilenko is wearing adidas Barricade line, just like Justine Henin, who shockingly retired from the sport two days ago, and Andrea Petkovic, who wore both all-white and all-green ensembles.

In the following photo you can also see the back of Maria Sharapova's Nike dress. There was a lot of talk about Sharapova's Oz Open Ace Dress and Nike people even made a video describing the whole process behind it, and her shoes.

Here's the front part of the dress:

But let's get back to adidas.

Flavia Pennetta was wearing adidas Adipure line, with stripes.

While Daniela Hantuchova, just like Ana Ivanovic, sported the wonderful adidas Adizero dress. However, I got a bit disappointed by the opening in the back. It would've been better without it.

Samantha Stosur looked sleek in her white Lacoste dress.

Jelena Jankovic and ANTA failed to bring anything new to the table, and I'm mentioning her only because of her previously earned fashion fame.

Melanie Oudin switched from adidas to Wilson tennis clothes, and here's how it looks.

Another apparel change involving adidas took place – with Dinara Safina moving from the German brand to Italian Sergio Tacchini.

As for Fila, they chose grass green for Kim Clijsters, and their classic colors for Svetlana Kuznetsova.

Top seed Caroline Wozniacki was the ballerina of the tournament, with adidas by Stella McCartney white and pink dress.

Vera Zvonareva and K-Swiss I'll mention only because Vera was the second seed and I want to show something from K-Swiss as well, but compared to other designs, theirs doesn't stand out, which is essentially not a bad thing.

Here's a bit of purple Reebok, represented by Shahar Peer.

And some more of Nike, pink and white on Victoria Azarenka.

For the end, I'll let you guess whose socks are these.

Wow, I've made an extensive overview! So many photos, so many brands and different styles. My No.1 option as of late is always adidas. The fashion fun award goes to Venus! What are your picks? Do tell!

(photos: Upali Wickramasinghe, Tidalist, Ben Solomon, Getty Images/Clive Brunskill, Getty Images/Quinn Rooney, Getty Images/Cameron Spencer, Getty Images/Mark Dadswell, Getty Images/Quinn Rooney via Australian Open, Life.com)

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)

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 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)