Spares Serena the effort of beating her for what would have been the 11th straight time. In those matches, Li Na has won 2 sets total - though in fairness, in the Miami final, it did look as though she was going to take the first set. Serena's draw looks like a reasonably rough road, though. She might face Lisicki (who has one of the best serves on the tour) in R16, Sharapova in the quarters, and Kerber or Radwanska in the semis, all of whom can give Serena a game if the bounces are going funny on the clay. Thankfully for her, Ana Ivanovic (who beat her in Melbourne of course, but also took a set off her in Rome) is in the other half of the draw.
I'm very happy about Wawrinka. I make no secret of my distaste for his antics, and am really looking forward to seeing Murray match his career-best showing at RG by making the semis. Aside from the blessing of missing Wawrinka, though, he may have to deal with Kohschreiber, Gasquet, and either Monfils or Fognini - any of whom are capable of threatening Murray on clay if they really bring their A game, and two of whom are French and will have enormous crowd support.
Meanwhile, Federer has no one of note before the quarters, unless you count Youzhny, while Djokovic faces ahead to a lively Raonic (who almost dropped him in the Rome semis) in the quarters, with Tsonga or Jerzy Janowicz in the round of 16. Nadal has Ferrer (who only really does well on clay) up for the quarters, but has never really been threatened by him. So I fully expect relatively smooth sailing into the quarters for the big names, which should make for some epic matches next week.