After a three-hour third set and six match points saved, Francesca Schiavone defeated Svetlana Kuznetsova and advanced to the quarterfinals of the 2011 Australian Open. It is now the longest women’s Grand Slam match in history. It lasted 4 hours and 44 minutes, and included a stunning 30-game third set. Final score: 6-4 1-6 16-14. During the course of the match, 358 points were played!

The match was 25 minutes longer than the previous longest women’s Grand Slam match – the 4 hours and 19 minutes encounter between Barbora Zahlavova-Strycova and Regina Kulikova at last year’s Australian Open. Read more »

Dear readers, this is a guest post by Rodney Perez, who wanted to share with us the things one shouldn't miss while on a visit to Melbourne for the Australian Open.

The Open has commenced! Like every year, Melbourne not only welcomes the best players in the world but it also receives thousands of tennis enthusiasts from all over the globe. The capital of the "Garden State", as Victoria is also known,  has more than a couple of reasons to show off to us "northern hemispherians" and keep their visitors entertained. So if you are lucky enough to be in Melbourne and want to enjoy what the city and its gorgeous natural surroundings have to offer, here’s five things you shouldn’t miss:

Queen Victoria Market

Queen Victoria Market might not be the hippest of markets but you won’t find many others like it. Every Wednesday from 5:30 pm until 10:00 pm, 135 vendors offer a real alternative to the high-street shops, offering a wide array of products, which range from exotic plants to original clothing. You will also be able to enjoy the best of international cuisine with 35 stalls dedicated to catering to the most diverse taste buds.

National Sports Museum

Located at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the NSM gathers much of the history of Australian Sports. No better place to have a sports museum than Melbourne, widely known as both the cultural and sports capital of Australia. The museum offers permanent exhibitions on the Olympics, Australian Football, Multi-Sports and Cricket, among others. Read more »

Samantha Stosur became the highest seed to fall in the third-round Saturday action at the Australian Open, as Petra Kvitova followed up her Brisbane International title of two weeks ago with a 7-6(5) 6-3 victory over the fifth-seeded great local hope.

The Australian never recovered after losing a tense 63-minute first set, leaving her fourth-round showings in 2006 and 2010 as her best results from nine Australian Opens. Stosur served no aces, compared to Kvitova’s 5, and had just 11 winners, while Kvitova scored 35.

The world No.28 Kvitova is now leading Stosur 2-0 in their head-to-head record. The Czech won their first encounter as well, which was at the 2008 French Open, when she handed Stosur only three games.

Third seed Kim Clijsters survived her first test of the 2011 Australian Open to defeat Alize Cornet 7-6(3) 6-3 on the day of the Frenchwoman's 21st birthday and advance to the fourth round. Second seed Vera Zvonareva is through as well, but also after a match which featured a tiebreak, an 11-9 tiebreak in the second set against Lucie Safarova. Final score was 6-3 7-6(9). (photo: Rexness)

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.

Seven-time Grand Slam champion Justine Henin had been playing the Australian Open final three times in her last four appearances, including last year when the Belgian reached the championship match on her comeback, but this year Svetlana Kuznetsova stopped the former No.1 in the third round and handed Henin her earliest Grand Slam exit since Wimbledon 2005, with a 6-4 7-6(8) win.

Henin seemed affected by an elbow injury which prevented her from playing the second part of the 2010 season, as she made 41 unforced errors. In the second set Henin came back from a break down twice, and gave the 23rd-seeded Kuznetsova a hard time in the tiebreak, but the Russian won on her fourth match point and scored only her third victory over Henin in their 19 meetings.

Top seed Caroline Wozniacki avenged her second round loss to Dominika Cibulkova last week in Sydney, defeating the Slovakian 6-4 6-3 to advance to the fourth round. Wozniacki made equal number of winners and unforced errors (11-11), while Cibulkova outweighed her 31 winners with 41 unforced errors.

Next for Kuznetsova is Francesca Schiavone, and Wozniacki’s next opponent is unseeded Anastasija Sevastova.

As for Maria Sharapova, she screamed off a stiff challenge from Julia Goerges and won the match 4-6 6-4 6-4.