For the sixth year in a row, Women's Tennis Blog is using the relaxed off-season period to review the on-court styles of our top players and brands. Of course, who else will kick off the series than our fashion darling Maria Sharapova. Let's see what the Russian wore in the year that saw her complete a Career Slam and win the Olympic silver.

In 2012, the Nike-clad Sharapova continued her subdued sporty femininity. Glamour, layers, frills and popping details have not described the Russian's tennis style since last year. Of course, Masha is still the most glamorous WTA player, but on court that glamour is toned down now, fitting the simple, everyday wearable category. There still are details in her designs, but you have to look deeper to find them.

White with electric green accents was Sharapova's color combination for the Australian sun and it transcended to the indoor hardcourt of Coubertin Stadium in Paris.

At Indian Wells, the 25-year-old wore a blue dress with light blue scales on the sides and in the back, matching the color of the straps.

*Visit the full list of retrospections of WTA players' yearly outfits*

Very ordinary red tanks followed for four tournaments, paired with simple white and black skirts. Read more »

Our stats analyst Omair is already famous for his statistical articles and now he's inspired Ludolf, another reader of Women's Tennis Blog and fan of tennis numbers, to contribute his take on the WTA rankings, i.e. he compared the actual rankings with the performance of players at the biggest events – Grand Slams and WTA Championships. Enjoy!

The WTA ranking does not rank properly the strength of players in the sense of the ability to win a match or a tournament. The main reason is that it is cumulative and therefore underestimates players without a sufficient number of tournaments. We need to compute an average to avoid this. Moreover, the WTA ranking considers tournaments with weights not depending on the quality of players on them.

To achive the above-mentioned goal it seems to be more appropriate to take the average result from majors and the WTA Championships, the tournaments where the best players are almost always present. By the result of a player we mean the number of her losses (including the rounds which she did not achieve), i.e. 0 for the winner, 1 for the defeated finalist, 2 for defeated semifinalists, and so on. The results for the last 52 weeks are presented in the table, completed by the WTA ranking (after the Australian Open) for comparison. (FO: French Open, W: Wimbledon, USO: US Open, WTA: WTA Championships, AO: Australian Open)

Read more »

The status of a new WTA number one and a Grand Slam champion brought all the attention to Victoria Azarenka and people started digging more info about the Belarusian, particularly asking me about her boyfriend whom she mentioned in her Australian Open trophy speech:

I would like to thank my team—you guys have been supporting me for so long and believing in me, and it made me realise that I can believe in myself and I can finally raise this trophy. I want to thank my parents, who are watching for sure now, my friends, my boyfriend and my grandmother, the person who inspires me the most in my life.

So who is Victoria Azarenka's boyfriend?

His name Sergei Bubka (see his closeup photo here). He is a 24-year-old Ukrainian pro tennis player residing in Monte Carlo, just like his girlfriend. Currently his ATP ranking is No.157, the highest was No.145, and he is yet to win an ATP title in either singles or doubles. Read more »

In life and in tennis we like to recognize some patterns and predict future based on current facts. Our stats analyst Omair made sure to present us the historical patterns of the Australian part of the season and the chances of an Australian Open tune-up tournament winner to lift the trophy at the Australian Open. You'll see that the Sydney winner is the most likely, which was the case this year with Victoria Azarenka.

A few days before the Australian Open I found some interesting things regarding the winners of the Australian Open warm-up events and their performance at the Australian Open that year. There are four warm-up events which pave the way for the players to get into some form for the first Grand Slam of the year:

• Brisbane
• Auckland
• Hobart
• Sydney

Let's have a look at how well this year's winners performed at the Australian Open and how they compared to the winners of previous years and their performances at the Australian Open that year. Please note that for this article I used the results of Sydney and Auckland from 1988 onwards, since it was from 1988 that all the players played from the first round of the 128 player draw for the Grand Slam.

BRISBANE

• Best Australian Open result in the respective year: quarterfinals
• 2012: Kaia Kanepi won Brisbane and lost in the second round of the Australian Open

The Brisbane tournament started way back in 1997, and was known as Gold Coast back then. The name of the tournament was changed in 2009 to the Brisbane International. This year the Brisbane event went Premier. The first ever winner of the tournament back in 1997 was Elena Likhovtseva who defeated Ai Sugiyama in the final. Elena Likhovtseva could not carry on the momentum to the Australian Open and lost in the first round, while Sugiyama lost in the second round of the Australian Open that year.

The best result a Brisbane winner so far had at the Australian Open was a quarterfinal showing. Three players achieved that feat. Venus Williams was the first Brisbane player to reach the Australian Open quarterfinal back in 2002 when she won the Brisbane event. Venus lost to 8th-seeded Monica Seles in three sets. Patty Schnyder in 2005 and Petra Kvitova in 2011 followed in the footsteps of Venus Willaims and went on to reach the quarterfinals of the Australian Open after winning the event in the respective years. Schnyder lost in three sets to 19th-seeded Nathalie Dechy, while Kvitova lost in straight sets to second-seeded Vera Zvonareva.

Kaia Kanepi won the Brisbane event this year. Based on the history of the Brisbane winners and their performance at the Australian Open, Kanepi's chances of making it out the second round were 67%.

Twice in the tournament's 15-year history has the Brisbane winner lost in the second round, Kanepi with her second round showing this year made it thrice in the 16-year history of the tournament. Many dubbed Kanepi as the dark horse for the Australian Open after her strong showing at the Brisbane event, however, Kanepi could not carry that momentum and fell victim of Ekaterina Makarova, who would go on to crush Serena Williams, five-time Australian Open champion, in the fourth round.

Brisbane winner has yet to move beyond the quarterfinal stage of the Australian Open, and with the event going Premier this year, this statistic will for sure change in the years to come. Although, I had hoped that this statistic will change this year since the field at Brisbane was very strong with the likes of Kim Clijsters, Serena Williams, Samantha Stosur.

AUCKLAND

• Best Australian Open result in the respective year: semifinals
• 2012: Zheng Jie won Auckland and lost in the fourth round of the Australian Open Read more »

In early December 2011, Ricardo Sanchez was super excited to start working with Caroline Wozniacki, but the cooperation has already come to an end and all it will be remembered for is Wozniacki's failure to win her first Grand Slam title at the Australian Open and her actual fall to No.4 in the rankings following the quarterfinal loss at the tournament, after reigning the top spot for most of the time since October 2010.

The cause of the split is that the new coach couldn't find his way in the confines of the already established system of Wozniacki and her father Piotr. In simple words, Piotr had his own way of coaching and Ricardo was supposed to adapt to it, rather than to install his way of work. The two systems clashed, the outcome was that Caroline was confused and Piotr asked Ricardo to leave. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)