After a tough warm-up in the first round of Roland Garros 2012, world No.1 Victoria Azarenka cruised through her second-round match against Dinah Pfizenmaier of Germany in 55 minutes, 6-1 6-1.

Azarenka committed almost six times less unforced errors (11 to 60) than in her opening match against Alberta Brianti, in which the Belarusian won 12 of the last 14 games to come back and celebrate a 6-7(6) 6-4 6-2 victory after being down a set and 0-4.

The 58th-ranked Aleksandra Wozniak, who took out seed No.31 Zheng Jie in the second round, will be Azarenka's opponent in the third round. Interestingly, Wozniak will play world No.1 for the second straight year at Roland Garros. In 2011 she faced Caroline Wozniacki in the second round and lost 6-3 7-6(6). (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

Victoria Azarenka is top seed at a Grand Slam for the first time in her career and she almost became the first women’s top seed to exit at that stage of Roland Garros. Despite notching up an early break in the match, Azarenka went on to find herself five points away from losing to 32-year-old veteran Alberta Brianti, trailing the Italian winner of one WTA title 6-7(6) 0-4, before taking 12 of the last 14 games to win 6-7(6) 6-4 6-2. The world No.1 piled up 60 unforced errors in the encounter, sending the ball anywhere but inside the lines. Azarenka's opponent in the second round will be world No.198 Dinah Pfizenmaier.

Seed No.30 Mona Barthel became the first seed to fall out of Roland Garros 2012 by suffering an upset to Lauren Davis, 6-1 6-1, in the first round on the second day. No.11 seed Vera Zvonareva has pulled out injured and is replaced by lucky loser Sesil Karatantcheva. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

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Will it be red hot Maria Sharapova or Serena Williams? Once clumsy on clay, Sharapova is now a definite favorite for the Roland Garros trophy. With Stuttgart and Rome titles this season, Sharapova has raised her record in clay finals to 5-0 and she's 11-0 on dirt this season. Also, four of her last five titles have come on clay. The 2002 French Open champion Serena is on a 17-match winning streak on clay, the second best clay streak this century, and even though she withdrew in the semifinals of Rome, she's expected to be healthy for Roland Garros. Just like Sharapova, Serena won two titles on clay this year, in Charleston and Madrid.

World number one Victoria Azarenka has had a stellar season, with a 35-3 win-loss record, four titles, including her first Grand Slam at the Australian Open, and two finals in eight tournaments she played in 2012. As for the clay season, she played the finals of Stuttgart and Madrid and beat three former French Open champions on the way (Svetlana Kuznetsova, Ana Ivanovic and Li Na) before losing to the hottest players of the moment, to Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova. Azarenka then withdrew from Rome after comfortably winning her opener, saying that she didn't even want to enter the tournament in the first place, but was forced by the pressure of WTA rules. This will be the first time Azarenka is top seed at a Grand Slam. Read more »

Not looking troubled by health problems, world No.1 Victoria Azarenka dominated Shahar Peer in the late night match at the Italian Open. But soon after advancing to the third round with a 6-1 6-2 victory earned in just 55 minutes, Azarenka surprised with a withdrawal from the tournament, stating a right shoulder injury. Oh, it seems that another clash of Azarenka and Radwanska was really not meant to be.

Azarenka’s pullout gives the 14th-seeded Dominika Cibulkova an easy way into her first Rome quarterfinals. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

Agnieszka Radwanska has still not defeated Victoria Azarenka this year, but has finally lost to a player other than the Belarusian! The Pole entered the second-round match of the Internazionali BNL d'Italia with a 32-6 win-loss record in 2012 and all the six losses came at the hands of top-ranked Azarenka, who was again lurking in her half of the draw. However, Radwanska escaped the unpleasant taste of losing to her nemesis again, by exiting the tournament in an opening match, falling to Petra Cetkovska 6-4 4-6 6-1.

After the match, Cetkovska praised Radwanska's intelligent game, saying that it was her ability to perform better in important moments that decided the match. Radwanska, Dubai and Miami champion this season, was half-hearted, exhausted and injured:

Losing at the beginning of the tournament is disappointing. I'm tired from all the matches I've been playing and I have some problems with my back. I'm going to take a few days off then play Brussels. I still have some matches before Paris.

Radwanska is now actually 0-4 in head-to-head against the 28th-ranked Cetkovska, but this is the first time that the 27-year-old Czech beat her as a Top 10 player, even more so, Radwanska is now world No.3. Three of those four defeats to Cetkovska happened in the last 12 months. (via WTA Tour, photo: Ralf Reinecke)