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.

Venus Williams worked her way into the third round of the Australian Open after suffering an injury scare in the first set against Sandra Zahlavova. Medical treatment and a strapping around her right thigh helped, and the fourth seed returned to the court, bageled the world No.97 in the second set and worked her way through the third. Final score: 6-7(6) 6-0 6-4.

Williams managed to push her own boundaries when it comes to ugly tennis dresses. Last year her US Open fireworks dresses were trashy, but on Day 3 of the 2011 Australian Open she surpassed not only those pink and black dresses, but even her blue zipper dress from two days ago. Nothing is impossible, that’s what Venus is suggesting! Things can always get worse. The upper yellow part looks horrible, but a special touch of awfulness is provided by the undefined design/colors in the bottom.

Top seed Caroline Wozniacki advanced with a 58-minute 6-1 6-0 victory over Vania King. Wozniacki’s opponent in the third round will be Dominika Cibulkova, who won their last encounter, only last week in Sydney.

Maria Sharapova booked her place in the third round, with a 7-6(3) 6-3 win over Virginie Razzano, just as Justine Henin and Victoria Azarenka did. Henin beat Elena Baltacha 6-1 6-3, Azarenka beat Andrea Hlavackova 6-4 6-4.

Many other seeds also advanced, but here are those that fell in the second round action on Day 3: No.15 Marion Bartoli was upset by Vesna Manasieva, No.21 Yanina Wickmayer lost to Anastasija Sevastova, No.32 Tsvetana Pironkova was defeated by Monica Niculescu, and No.20 Kaia Kanepi fell to Julia Goerges. (photo via Yahoo)

Women's Tennis Blog is back from a two-week vacation, just in time for the Australian Open. We missed a lot of action leading up to the first Grand Slam of the season, but now we'll make sure not to miss a bit of the Australian major. So let's see what happened on Day 1.

Top seed and world No.1 Caroline Wozniacki, playing her first Grand Slam as a top-ranked player, won the first round against Gisela Dulko 6-3 6-4. The world No.52 Dulko scored 35 winners, but outweighed them with 38 unforced errors. Her conversion of break points was also bad – only 1 of 8.

Wozniacki’s opponent in the second round will be Vania King, who defeated Tamira Paszek to advance. Wozniacki and King have played each other only once so far, last year at Indian Wells, but it was an absolute battle as Wozniacki rallied from 4-1 deficit in the third set to get past her first match of the tournament.

Fourth seed Venus Williams is playing for the first time since the 2010 US Open semifinals and warming up is not an issue for her as in her opening match against Sara Errani she had 33 winners against 18 unforced errors, hit 8 aces and won 15 of 20 points at the net. Final score: 6-3 6-2.

Maria Sharapova, sporting her new Nike Oz Open Ace Dress with adjustable straps, started her match against Tamarine Tanasugarn nervously, as last year she also played the first round on Rod Laver Arena and lost to Maria Kirilenko badly. The 14th-seeded Sharapova didn’t let the history repeat, and although she lost her opening game to love, she beat Tanasugarn 6-1 6-3.

Another big name, Justine Henin, also advanced, but only after digging deep against always-tricky Sania Mirza. Seed No.11 Henin eventually managed to take control and win 5-7 6-3 6-1.

Many more seeds are also through: Yanina Wickmayer, Francesca Schiavone, Li Na, Victoria Azarenka, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Andrea Petkovic, Marion Bartoli, Dominika Cibulkova, Tsvetana Pironkova, and Kaia Kanepi. Daniela Hantuchova and Aravane Rezai suffered upsets – Rezai to Barbora Zahlavova Strycova, and Hantuchova to Regina Kulikova. (photos via WTA Tour and Nike)

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 »

When it comes to 2010 tennis fashion and Venus Williams, the leitmotif throughout the season was a lifting bottom part of dresses. Venus apparently felt like showing off her booty this year, as she herself is the creator of these EleVen designs.

I like the EleVen dresses which combined black and red with sexy lingerie-inspired look. Very unique, different from other brands, you could immediately tell it was EleVen. The Roland Garros dress looks cute, with a combination of ballet innocence and sexy lace. But, there's a big "but", I like the dress when it's still!

In action it was the biggest disaster of Roland Garros, evidenced below.

What possessed Venus to wear that? Read more »

We have shared with you so many photos of women's tennis players when they were kids, but strangely, we never got to feature the Williams sisters. There is an abundance of beautiful photos of this unprecedented pairing.

Actually, we once included a cute picture of little Venus Williams in a shopping cart surrounded by tennis balls. Read more »