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)

Red clay, green clay, blue clay – it's all the same for Serena Williams, even though it's her least favorite surface. The American became the first champion on the infamous blue clay by demolishing world No.1 Victoria Azarenka in the final of the Mutua Madrid Open.

The top-seeded Azarenka finished the first set with a double fault and the match with an awkward missing of the ball and that can pretty much sum up the short Madrid final which lacked in competitiveness and rallies. In the third game of the match, trailing 0-2, Azarenka made three double faults to drop serve again and then quickly go even further down, 0-4, before winning her first game, which didn't mean much as Serena soon won the set 6-1. The second set was not a very different story, only that Azarenka won two more games. Final score: 6-1 6-3.

Serena hit 14 aces to Azarenka's zero! And Azarenka had only six winners in the entire match, compared to Williams' 26. Moreover, Williams won an astonishing 91% points on first serve, while Azarenka won 63%.

All in all, Serena stormed through the tournament to stay unbeaten in her last 13 matches on clay, losing a set only to Caroline Wozniacki in the Madrid quarterfinals. Besides Wozniacki and Azarenka, Serena also defeated Elena Vesnina, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, second seed Maria Sharapova and Lucie Hradecka en route to the Ion Tiriac trophy and $631,000 in prize money. The Mutua Madrid Open title is Serena's 41st career title! (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

In the Madrid Open quarterfinals, ninth seed Serena Williams cruised past second seed Maria Sharapova 6-1 6-3 for her sixth straight win against a Top 2 player and her seventh straight win against Sharapova. Serena’s opponent in the semifinals will be Lucie Hradecka, whose dream run continued when after third seed Petra Kvitova and Ekaterina Makarova she upset fifth seed Samantha Stosur 7-6(8) 7-6(6), hitting 19 aces in a match that had no breaks in regular games, as Hradecka saved four of four break points and Stosur one of one.

Top seed Victoria Azarenka put her dissatisfaction with the slippery blue clay aside and found a way to beat Li Na despite losing the first set in which the Chinese played "unbelievable", as Azarenka said. Final score 3-6 6-3 6-3. Azarenka’s opponent in the semis will be fourth seed Agnieszka Radwanska who beat Varvara Lepchenko 6-4 6-4. Infamously, Azarenka and Radwanska have played each other five times this year (and it's only May!), and each time Azarenka won. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

Third seed Petra Kvitova’s Madrid Open title defense was stopped already in the second round and the responsible is qualifier Lucie Hradecka, Kvitova’s good friend and countrywoman, who won the match 6-4 6-3 to score her first Top 10 victory.

Even though officially this is the first time that Hradecka beats Kvitova, Hradecka revealed that she had defeated her before at the end of last year in some club matches, while they’ve also played a lot of sparring games for Fed Cup.

The world No.105 Hradecka’s plan to concentrate on her serve worked well, and even though she had 4% less points won on first serve, in the department of points won on second serve she was much better than Kvitova – 54% to Kvitova’s 25%. In addition, she was much more successful in conversion of break points, taking Kvitova’s serve a total of five times.

Hradecka, whose three of four WTA runner-up finishes came on clay, will play Ekaterina Makarova in the third round, after the Russian upset compatriot Maria Kirilenko 6-4 6-4.

Also in the second round, fourth seed and new world No.3 Agnieszka Radwanska ended Sara Errani’s 16-match claycourt winning streak quickly, 6-0 6-1. Radwanska will next face Roberta Vinci who also didn’t waste time in the second round, eliminating Yanina Wickmayer 6-1 6-2.

In the third round, top seed Victoria Azarenka beat seed No.13 Ana Ivanovic 6-4 6-4, eighth seed Li Na conquered seed No.12 Angelique Kerber 7-5 6-4, and fifth seed Samantha Stosur won over Petka Cetkovska 6-3 6-2. (photo: Ralf Reinecke)

Top two seeds at the Mutua Madrid Open Victoria Azarenka and Maria Sharapova both advanced to the third round of the tournament where they will face Ana Ivanovic and Lucie Safarova respectively.

The second-seeded Sharapova was the first to go through, beating Klara Zakopalova 6-4 6-3. Sharapova opened the match by breaking Zakopalova to love and then working her way to winning the set from a 4-1 lead. In the second set Sharapova built a 5-2 lead, but serving for the match she lost her serve. She won the match, however, breaking Zakopalova to love. In the third round Sharapova will play Lucie Safarova, who defeated Carla Suarez Navarro 6-3 6-4.

Top seed Azarenka overcame Andrea Hlavackova 6-3 7-6(2) and will play Ana Ivanovic in the third round. Ivanovic advanced with a 7-5 6-1 victory over Nadia Petrova, serving seven aces and scoring 77% on first serve. (via Sharapova's official website, photo: Ralf Reinecke)