His last trip to Memphis was supposed to be the start of a late-career renaissance. This year’s early exit will be used as evidence that the long decline is only beginning.

Defending champion Andy Roddick was ousted from the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships in Memphis on Wednesday, losing his first-round match to world No. 75 Xavier Malisse, 7-6 (8), 7-5.

The loss was Roddick’s earliest exit in 12 Memphis appearances and drops the 29-year-old to 2-3 on the young season.

Roddick was unable to convert two set points in the first, then was broken in his final service game of the second. It was his first career loss to the Belgian in nine meetings.

Since winning this tournament in 2011 on a diving shot against Milos Raonic, Roddick has seen his ranking drop from No. 8 to No. 27. He’s advanced past the quarterfinals of just two tournaments, making no finals. Appearances at Wimbledon and the Australian Open ended before the first weekend.

The 500 rankings points earned during last year’s win came off the books last week, precipitating Roddick’s drop in the rankings.

Roddick has battled various injuries this season. A hamstring problem forced him to retire in Melbourne and he sprained his ankle last week in San Jose. He refused to blame the ailments on the loss.

“I hit the ball okay, I just didn’t hit it well when I had to,” Roddick told reporters after the match. ”I had nine, ten years of a pretty clean bill of health overall. I think for me to feel too sorry for myself now, it probably wouldn’t be okay.”

Serena Williams walked on water during an exhibition in the Mexican city of Monterrey. Oy, don’t give her any ideas, WTA.

The 14-time Grand Slam champion took part in the demonstration with Gisela Dulko. While standing on a floating, acrylic mini-tennis court, the two women hit for a short time, then spent the rest of their marine adventure dancing, much to the delight of hundreds of spectators.

It was all part of a promotional event for this week’s Whirlpool Monterrey Open.

Serena had to withdraw from the tournament with an ankle injury, which makes the decision to put her on a slippery court in the middle of a fake river all the more questionable. The WTA can’t keep top players healthy while on regular surfaces. Then they’re going to have their top star spend time on a thin film of water while she’s nursing an injured ankle? What’s next week? Making Maria Sharapova run an obstacle course where baseball bats swing at her ACL?

World No. 1 Victoria Azarenka withdrew from the Dubai Tennis Championships on Wednesday, joining three other seeded players in an early injury exit from the tournament. It’s the latest in a rash of ailments that have plagued the start to the 2012 WTA season.

Here’s a list of top WTA players who have withdrawn from a tournament so far this year (with current rankings in parenthesis):

• Victoria Azarenka, Brisbane and Dubai (1)

• Maria Sharapova, Brisbane (2)

• Petra Kvitova, Dubai (3)

• Marion Bartoli, Doha (7)

• Vera Zvonareva, Doha and Dubai (8)

• Li Na, Paris, Dubai (9)

• Andrea Petkovic, Australian Open (10)

• Serena Williams, Brisbane, Monterrey (11)

• Sabine Lisicki, Auckland, Paris (13)

• Jelena Jankovic, Paris (14)

• Dominika Cibulkova, Dubai (16)

• Julie Goerges, Sydney (19)

• Kim Clijsters, Indian Wells (35)

Twelve of the top 20 have retired early from a match or withdrawn from a tournament. Throw in Kim Clijsters and Venus Williams (both ranked outside the top 30) and 13 of the top 18 women in the world have dealt with some kind of injury or illness this season. The fortunate five who haven’t: Caroline Wozniacki, Sam Stosur, Agnieszka Radwanska, Francesca Schiavone and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

Love — Caroline Wozniacki held a falcon at the player’s party in Dubai. She probably has another good two or three years of competitive play left in her.

15 — The former world No. 1 heads up a solid quarterfinal field at the tournament. She’ll play Ana Ivanovic in one Thursday quarter. The winner of that match plays either Julie Goerges and Daniela Hantuchova. On the other side of the draw, Jelena Jankovic plays Sam Stosur and Agnieszka Radwanska plays Sabine Lisicki.

30 — From 10sballs.com: Maria Sharapova is designing a watch for Tag Heuer. She also name-drops Uma Thurman and Brad Pitt (in that order, which I found odd).

40 — For what will probably be a brief time only, you can currently get longer odds on Roger Federer to win the French Open (12-1) than Juan Martin Del Potro (10-1) at a top British oddsmaker.

Game — Unsolicited opinion: Victoria Azarenka’s rise to No. 1 makes it difficult to do anything about the grunting issue. Any change to the rule would now seem to target the best player in the game, a fact which will scare away an already-skittish WTA.

Game Point is Busted Racquet’s roundup of facts, figures and links from around the web.

Love — Showing little effect from his 0-2 Davis Cup performance, Roger Federer won the ABN Amro event in Rotterdam, defeating Juan Martin Del Potro, 6-1, 6-4 in Sunday’s final. The world No. 3 rallied from a set and a break down in Saturday’s semifinal to Nikolay Davydenko. For his efforts, Federer won approximately $450,000, less than half of his reported $1 million appearance fee at the event.

15 — Andy Roddick dropped to No. 27 in the ATP rankings, his lowest position since Aug. 19, 2001. The 29-year-old American’s 10-spot drop was due to dropping the 500 ranking points he earned with last year’s win in Memphis.

30 — Bar Refaeli, who posed with Rafael Nadal in this year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, recently played tennis in her underwear. I could pretty much write anything in this sentence since I’m sure nobody made it past the last one.

40 — SI.com’s Jon Wertheim talks tennis with former NFL coach Brian Billick. Not a typo, definitely worth the listen.

Game — Serena Williams tweet of the day:

“Do you have to grunt?” is the new “do you deserve to be No. 1?”

The ascension of Victoria Azarenka to the top of the WTA rankings brings about a number of changes to women’s tennis. One of them is that press conferences involving the world No. 1 will now contain at least one thinks-it’s-more-clever-than-it-is question about grunting instead of a how-do-you-phrase-this-without-sounding-like-a-condescending-jerk question about deserving to be No. 1 without winning a Grand Slam.

To her credit, Azarenka is still trying to creatively defend herself on the grunting issue rather than speaking in platitudes. Consider this exchange from Doha.

Q. [...] [Is grunting] something you could go on the court and adjust like that, or is this something that will be with us for your entire career?

VICTORIA AZARENKA: Well, it will be with me for my entire career.  But let me put it that way: Do you snore?

Q.  I do, actually.

VICTORIA AZARENKA:  Can you control that?

Q. Well, there are ways, I guess.

VICTORIA AZARENKA: There are ways?  But you still snore, right?

Q. Yeah.

VICTORIA AZARENKA:  So it’s natural to you, right?  So that’s natural to me, too, the way I play tennis.  That’s it.

Q. I mean, when people bring this up or people say…

VICTORIA AZARENKA: Sorry, but it probably distracts your wife, if you have a wife, I don’t know, right?

Q. There you go.

VICTORIA AZARENKA: There you go.

The fact that Azarenka’s analogy is ridiculous is besides the point. (I drool in my sleep. That doesn’t make it socially acceptable to do at the dinner table.) What’s important is that she took down that reporter like a Grand Slam qualifier. It was the interview equivalent of a double bagel.

He lobbed up a question with uncertainty and had it smashed back in his face. How do you not fib when asked if you’re a snorer? Even if you saw logs like Paul Bunyan, that’s a must-lie situation.

“I think confidence is very overrated,” said world No. 1 Victoria Azarenka after defeating Sam Stosur 6-1, 6-2 in the Doha finals for her 17th-straight win to open the 2012 season.

That sounds exactly like something the most confident player on the WTA might say. Azarenka won her opening tournament of the season, took home her first Grand Slam, ascended to No. 1 and then consolidated the ranking with the win in Doha. Her rise comes exactly one year after she says her game “was a little bit of a mess.” Now she’s playing through injuries, hitting her groundstrokes with power and precision and putting away top-ten opponents in the first set.

Though it’s too early to make comparisons to Novak Djokovic’s run at the beginning of 2012, the whispers are already there. A win in Dubai this week would turn them into legitimate conversation.

Some facts from Azarenka’s undefeated start:

• She became the first player since 2004 to win her first three tournaments of the year. Justine Henin won Sydney, Australia and Dubai that year. One year earlier, Serena Williams won her first three events (spread out over a longer time frame) in Australia, Paris and Miami.

• The longest win streak to open a season in the past 15 seasons belongs to Martina Hingis. In 1997, she won 37 matches in a row. The streak was eventually snapped in the French Open final.

• Steffi Graf holds the record for the longest season-starting streak. The German won 45-straight matches at the beginning of her dominant 1987 campaign.

• Azarenka plays her next match Wednesday in Dubai. With each successive win, she’ll generate more comparisons to Djokovic and his record start to last season. But you could also make the comparison to Djokovic’s 2012. Through Feb. 21, the world No. 1 is still undefeated on the year. He’s 7-0.

Maria Sharapova is is New York this week for the city’s biannual fashion week. The second-ranked Sharapova dazzled at multiple fashion shows, posing for pictures for the paparazzi, hobnobbing with celebrities and, most importantly, gave me a chance to use the word “hobnobbing.”

Sharapova didn’t walk the runway, but was front and center at the Vera Wang show, sitting next to Vogue editor Anna Wintour (above). If Wintour can’t be with her favorite tennis player, Roger Federer, the glamourous Sharapova is the next best thing. (As a bonus, they have the same taste in jackets.)

A gallery of photos featuring Maria at fashion week:

For an event that prides itself on exclusivity, there sure are a lot of fashion weeks. New York, London, Milan and Paris have two per year, one in the spring (for the fall collections) and one in the fall (for the spring collections). That means it’s fashion week somewhere in eight of the 52 weeks of the year. That’s two months and more than 15 percent of all weeks! Imagine if Shark Week tried the same tact.

Other popular content on the Yahoo! network:
• Y! Sports video: Why Floyd Mayweather was wrong about Jeremy Lin | Mayweather upset
• Athletes bare skin in Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit issue | Photos: Cover girl Kate Upton
• OMG!: Kobe Bryant shares kiss with estranged wife Vanessa

Game Point is Busted Racquet’s roundup of facts, figures and links from across the web.

Love — Caroline Wozniacki lost her first match since falling from No. 1, blowing three match points in a 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 loss to Lucie Safrova at the Qatar Open.

Chris Skelton tweeted a fascinating stat after the loss: In between the 2010 and 2011 editions of Wimbledon, Wozniacki lost two total matches before the third round of a tournament. In the seven months since Wimbledon 2011, she has already lost six such matches. The knock on Caro was always that she didn’t have the game for the full-field events. No one ever doubted her ability to win the lesser ones. Right now, she’d love to contend in a second-tier event.

15 — Here’s another stat: Wozniacki has a 20-10 (67 percent) record since she started dating Rory McIlroy. In the 11 months before she met him, her record was 74-12 (86 percent).

30 — Andy Roddick was victorious in his return to the tennis court. Playing for the first time since pulling out of the Australian Open with a hamstring injury, the 29-year-old American held off 19-year-old Denis Kudla in three sets at the San Jose Open. The final score was 6-7, 7-6, 6-4.

40 — It took one match for Roger Federer to advance to the quarterfinals in Rotterdam. The world No. 3 defeated Nicolas Mahut 6-4, 6-4 in the first round of the Dutch event and then moved into the quarters after Mikhail Youzhny withdrew from the tournament with a foot injury. Federer will face Jarko Nieminen in the quarters and could see either Tomas Berdych or Juan Martin Del Potro in Sunday’s final.

Game — The US Open Series has a new title sponsor. Emirates Airlines signed a seven-year deal with the USTA to sponsor the run of summer events in North America. The Wall Street Journal reports the deal is for more than $90 million and includes major promotions tied to the US Open.

Ana Ivanovic wished me a happy Valentine’s Day.

Sure, it was on a YouTube video posted by the WTA and available to anyone with an Internet connection, but I felt the spark. It’s undeniable.

If you want a V-Day greeting from Caroline Wozniacki, Victoria Azarenka, Sam Stosur or Agnieszka Radwasnka, you’ll enjoy the video below.

I’m just kidding about Ana. The only valentine in my life is sitting next to me right now. And I swear she didn’t make me write that.