This grass-court season is expected to be marked by Serena Williams’ return to tennis, after her almost a year long absence. The American, who has slipped to No.25 in the rankings from the No.1 where she stood when she last played competitively, plans to participate in the next week's Aegon International and then Wimbledon, where she will be defending her title.

Serena's sister Venus, a five-time Wimbledon champion, is also expected to play the grass-court Grand Slam. The last tournament she played was the 2011 Australian Open in January. Her health problem was a hip injury. Read more »

The Premier-level tournament in Rome is warming up, with the strong field of seven of the Top 10 players present, including world No.1 Caroline Wozniacki, but let’s remind ourselves of the dormant long-time champions Serena and Venus Williams and Kim Clijsters. What are they doing?

Serena Williams has slipped from No.10 to No.17 in the rankings released today and there is still no word on when she will come back from her two foot surgeries and the blood clot in her lungs. Serena's fall in the rankings is actually historical for American tennis history, as this week is the first week ever that the United States have no representative in the Top 10 in either WTA or ATP lists.

Soon it will be a year that Serena has been away from tennis courts. However, the younger Williams sister is far from bored. Recently she even had a stalker drama in her life. Read more »

Player parties provide a perfect venue for players to get in touch with their glamorous side (if they have one) and the blue red carpet on Tuesday night at the Paris Theater in Miami was one of the best such occasions.

Let's start with my favorites. Russian Anna Kournikova simply knows what to wear and how to work it, while her countrywoman Vera Zvonareva looks very pretty in a romantic purple dress.

Although I've been in the mood for floral prints lately, Anastasia Plavyuchenkova's dress is too much for my taste. Maria Sharapova is still faithful to her vintage-oriented style. 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 »

Venus Williams injured her right hip in the first-set tiebreak of her second-round encounter with Sandra Zahlavova and the injury took toll on her Australian Open appearance, as the fourth-seeded Williams withdrew from her third-round match with seed No.30 Andrea Petkovic. Williams started the match with Petkovic, but pulled out only minutes later.

Williams managed to pull off a three-set win over Zahlavova in the second round, but said that then she sustained one of her most painful injuries. Interesting fact is that Venus had never withdrawn from a Grand Slam match, actually from a stunning number of 250 of them.

This is Andrea Petkovic’s fourth Australian Open, and her best previous result was the second round, which she reached in 2009 and 2010. However, the German did play the fourth round of a Grand Slam – last year at the US Open.

Additional info: As expected, for her third match Venus prepared her third different dress. The cut was similar to the one from her first match, just that this one was more for night, black and glittery, making the see-through feature more prominent.