Maria Kirilenko appears in the April 2013 edition of InStyle Russia, posing in various settings inspired by theater and dance.

The Russian is known for her love of classical music: Vivaldi, Mozart, Bach and Beethoven, while of contemporary names she enjoys Russian cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich. She practiced ballet as a child and although she would still love to dance, for the lack of time, she can only afford to enjoy watching ballet.

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At the Family Circle Cup, after a dramatic 6-4 5-7 6-4 first-round victory over Melanie Oudin, in which Jelena Jankovic fell down and almost broke her back or her leg when her foot got stuck in the clay to finally win in a just five minutes less than three hours, on her fifth match point, having saved 17 of 22 break points in the match, the ninth-seeded Serb played another three-setter, this time against Caroline Garcia of France. There was another fall on clay for JJ and two match points against her, before she, after losing the first set 5-7, squeezed through the second-set tiebreak 12-10, and won the third set 6-3. Next for Jankovic will be Jessica Pegula, who upset eighth seed Mona Barthel 7-6(4) 6-1 to reach the third round.

In other Wednesday’s second-round matches, the highest seed in action, No.2 Caroline Wozniacki, lost just nine points in seven service games to defeat Silvia Soler-Espinosa 6-1 6-1 and will next play Andrea Petkovic. Third seed Samantha Stosur saved all five break points to beat Marina Erakovic 6-1 6-2 and is awaiting Eugene Bouchard, who eliminated friend Laura Robson in the second round. Besides the 16th-seeded Robson, the only other seed that lost on Wednesday was Sabine Lisicki, who fell to Mallory Burdette 3-6 7-6(5) 7-5. Venus Williams, Lucie Safarova and Julia Goerges also advanced. (via Women Who Serve)

On Sunday, March 31st, the celebration of Women’s Tennis Blog’s sixth birthday started and after awarding our lucky reader Stefan Milesevic with the $85 gift certificate for the wonderful tennis clothes of Denise Cronwall, the time has come to announce the second contest – now you have a chance to win a beautiful Emily Austin tennis necklace. Emily designs her jewelry by hand, studding Swarovski crystals of numerous colors to create custom necklaces, earrings, bracelets, etc.

The love and dedication Emily into her creations is evident, especially when you see the jewelry in person: it is so shiny, with beautiful details, high-quality silver chains, and the range of available colors is astonishing. Moreover, Emily has various sports collections: tennis, golf, baseball, yoga, basketball, soccer, etc.

Thanks to the generous and cooperative Emily, I have the pleasure to offer you to choose from three styles of tennis necklaces and you can pick your color of choice from Emily’s rich color palette. Therefore, one lucky winner of Women’s Tennis Blog’s contest will win one of the three tennis necklaces in whichever color he/she chooses.

HOW TO WIN THE NECKLACE?

On any social networking website (Twitter, Pinterest, Women’s Tennis Fans Facebook group or some other Facebook group, etc.), simply mention this contest in any way you like (preferably in a creative way ) and here in the comments below post the link to the social networking page to prove your mention. Moreover, in your mention you should include a link to this contest announcement page and incorporate keywords: Women’s Tennis Blog’s 6th birthday, Emily Austin, necklace. It's optional, but feel free to also use this or other photo of Emily’s necklaces as well.

I hope the instructions are clear. If you are uncertain about something, just ask me to clarify in the comments below and I will answer promptly.

The contest is open now and closes on April 5th, 10 p.m. CET. Good luck! The winner will be chosen randomly from all of you who qualify.

In celebration of Women's Tennis Blog's sixth birthday I've been organizing three giveaways and the first one has come to a close – we have the winner of the $85 gift certificate for Denise Cronwall tennis clothes. Stefan Milesevic, congratulations! You are the lucky winner of my Twitter contest! Of all the qualified contestants, I randomly picked you using website www.random.org. I will contact you shortly to ask for your email address and then we will coordinate the selection and delivery of the items you would like to receive.

I would like to thank all of you who participated and those who were not as lucky as Stefan this time I'm glad to say that another valuable contest is coming up – you will have a chance to win a wonderful crystal tennis necklace made by Emily Austin. Just stay tuned and be persistent!

Thank you, Denise, for providing this beautiful prize for my readers. I hope you enjoyed our cooperation as much as I did and I'm looking forward to working with you again.

We've arrived to the final article of our guest blogger Omair's series comparing the very best players of the WTA with their male counterparts. After the introductory and a general article, Omair compared:

• WTA world No.3 Maria Sharapova and ATP world No.3 Andy Murray (note: Sharapova is now No.2)
• WTA world No.2 Victoria Azarenka and ATP world No.2 Roger Federer (note: Azarenka is now No.3)

I started the series to compare the two tours, since media has grown biased towards the WTA: an ATP player playing through injury is appreciated for his commitment to tennis, but a WTA player playing through injury is criticized for poor tennis, grunting is never an issue on the ATP, while it's constantly being talked about on the WTA, questions have been raised regarding the poor quality of WTA. These and a lot of other things have been said about the WTA. Amy Fetherolf, co-founder of "The Changeover", recently wrote a piece about this biased media attitude.

As Marija said in the introduction, in this final article we'll compare Serena Williams and Novak Djokovic so let's see what the numbers are telling us. The categories highlighted in orange go in favor of Serena Williams, while I am confused about the one highlighted in blue.

Serena has been better than Djokovic in almost all the departments. Serena is far ahead of the Serb in the match winning percentage, record against the Top 4 and Top 10 players. Serena also beat two or more Top 10 players in more tournaments than the Serb. Read more »