Top seed Victoria Azarenka and third seed Serena Williams won their second-round matches at the Australian Open with decisive scorelines, 6-1 6-0 and 6-2 6-0 respectively.

The 23-year-old defending champion Azarenka confidently defeated Eleni Daniilidou, who had won their only previous meeting five years ago, and in the third round she will face Jamie Hampton, the only player who held a set point, in Auckland semifinals, against the most successful player of 2013, Agnieszka Radwanska, who is 22-0 in sets won this season.

Not troubled by the ankle she twisted in the previous round, Williams progressed past Garbine Muguruza, but only after accidentally smashing herself in the face with her racquet, again while hitting a forehand.

I think it happens to everyone, but I have never busted it wide open like that. So, yeah, I was like, Oh, no. I can’t have a tooth fall out. That would be horrible. I don’t know why my racket was even in my face. I mean, it’s like I have been playing tennis far too long to hit myself.

Despite the mishaps, the powerful Serena sealed the match with a 207km/h (128mp/h) ace! The American next plays Ayumi Morita as she continues her bid for a 16th Grand Slam title and sixth in Australia. (via Beyond the Baseline, photo: © Neal Trousdale)

Samantha Stosur's horror story at her home Grand Slam continued when the Australian blew a 5-2 lead in the third set to succumb to Zheng Jie  6-4 1-6 7-5 in the second round of the Australian Open. Stosur has now lost seven of her last nine matches in Australia (including the first rounds in Brisbane and Sydney this year) and has never been past the fourth round at Melbourne Park in eleven tries.

Stosur dropped the first set in 54 minutes, but her 5-2 lead in the third set made it look like she was on a good way to victory before the bad statistical fact that she had won only six Grand Slam matches from 37 tries after losing the first set came to haunt her. Stosur twice failed to serve it out and then dropped serve yet again, giving out the match with a double fault. Interestingly, Zheng has won four matches since Tokyo last year and two of them against Stosur.

The loss of Australian highest-ranked player makes the Australian Open women's singles draw without home players after Day 3.

Maria Sharapova advanced to the third round with her second straight double bagel! Actually, she's the first woman to have done so at a Grand Slam since 1985, before Sharapova was even born! In the first round her victim was Olga Puchkova in 55 minutes and today Misaki Doi in 47 minutes. Can you believe this: Sharapova has lost an average of just 1.5 games per match in the first week of non-grass majors in 2012/2013! (sources: Sydney Morning Herald, Chris Skelton's Twitter, photo: © Neal Trousdale)

Fila has been experiencing a major transformation when it comes to the faces representing their women's tennis clothes. Their by far most recognizable WTA faces were multiple Grand Slam champions Kim Clijsters and Svetlana Kuznetsova, and while the former retired last year after the US Open, the latter has switched to Chinese Qiaodan. Read more »

Leading 4-0 against Edina Gallovits-Hall in the first round of the Australian Open, Serena Williams fell while chasing a ball and twisted her right ankle. Her already heavily taped ankle was treated and re-taped multiple times from then on, but the outcome of the match does not suggest Williams was in any disadvantage as she scored a 6-0 6-0 victory. Actually, in the second set her opponent won just six points.

After the match, the 31-year-old ensured us that, despite the pain and swelling, nothing can stop her from pushing herself to win her third straight Grand Slam title:

I mean, unless something fatal happens to me, there's no way I'm not going to be competing. I'm alive. My heart's beating. I'll be fine.

Women's Tennis Blog's friend John Bolan recently had a telephone talk with his friend Lois Goodman, the tennis referee who had been accused of murdering her husband, but now the case has been dropped and she's been allowed to resume judging matches in 2013. John wanted to share a few words about his friendship with Lolo and some of Lolo's thoughts from their telephone conversation.

Lois (Lolo) Goodman was accused of murdering her husband of fifty years and arrested in her official uniform while working at the 2012 US Open. She was out of her Los Angeles home she shared with her husband when it seems he had an accident or heart attack on the stairs. When she came home, he was lying on his bed already dead. The police investigated and acknowledged that he died from an accident. Days later, while Lolo was in New York to officiate for the US Open, the authorities arrested her for his murder. She was publicly arrested in her tennis uniform, a picture of which was in all the national news. She was flown back to LA and thrown in prison.

Later, her attorneys won her release. She had to put up bail money and was not permitted to leave her home. She had to wear a monitoring devise around her ankle. Then, she proved she was not having an affair, passed a lie detector test and had an expert witness state her husband probably died because he had a heart attack on the stairs and fell and hit his head on the coffee cup he was carrying. The prosecution finally admitted they had no case and released her. After her release, Lolo was invited to appear on the morning TV shows and was also interviewed by Anderson Cooper.

I met Lolo 10 years ago at the WTA tournament in La Costa, California. Our friends knew her well and introduced me when she came and sat with us after her matches were completed. We would have parties each year for her and the other tennis officials. We would also talk to her at other tennis tournaments and take her to dinner in New York City after tennis at the Open. She is my favorite tennis official. Read more »