The top seeds crashed out at the Kremlin Cup as Milos Raonic and Dominika Cibulkova lost to qualifiers on Thursday.
Raonic of Canada, who had a bye into the second round, was eliminated by Ricardas Berankis of Lithuania 6-3, 4-6, 6-3.
Not long afterward, an out-of-sorts Cibulkova was eliminated by tenacious Vitalia Diatchenko of Russia 4-6, 6-2, 6-2.
Photo: EPA
Raonic’s loss put him in danger of failing to qualify for the ATP Finals in London next month. He blamed the defeat on illness.
“I was sick for the last 10 days, so I was in bed the whole time, and I only was able to prepare the last two days,” he said.
Raonic, who holds the eighth and last qualifying place for the Tour finals, said “there’s not really that much of a heartbreak” in exiting Moscow so early, since more points were on offer in the Paris Masters this month.
Cibulkova won the first set against local qualifier Diatchenko, but the Czech then suffered serious problems with her serve as the Russian broke her nine times.
Just three seeded players reached the women’s quarter-finals, led by No. 4 Lucie Safarova.
In other results from the men’s draw, third-seeded Ernests Gulbis of Latvia booked a quarter-final with Andreas Seppi of Italy, and Mikhail Kukushkin, knocked out Fabio Fognini of Italy 6-4, 6-2.
STOCKHOLM OPEN
AP, STOCKHOLM
Top seed and former champion Tomas Berdych beat Dustin Brown of Germany 7-5, 6-3 to reach the quarter-finals of the Stockholm Open on Thursday.
Next up for Berdych, the 2012 Stockholm champ, is Marius Copil of Romania, who beat fellow qualifier Pierre-Hugues Herbert of France 6-4, 6-3.
Jack Sock of the US put away sixth-seeded Jeremy Chardy of France 7-6 (7/3), 6-3 to line up defending champion Grigor Dimitrov in the quarter-finals, and qualifier Matthias Bachinger hit 15 aces as he upset Leonardo Mayer of Argentina 7-6 (7/3), 6-7 (7/4), 6-3.
Alexandr Dolgopolov of Ukraine fell to a third straight defeat, losing to Adrian Mannarino of France 6-4, 6-7 (7/2), 7-6 (7/4).
LUXEMBOURG OPEN
AP, LUXEMBOURG
Fourth-seeded Barbora Zahlavova Strycova of the Czech Republic rolled past Swedish qualifier Johanna Larsson 6-0, 6-2 to make the Luxembourg Open semifinals on Thursday.
She moved on to play Mona Barthel after Kiki Bertens of the Netherlands slumped to a 6-3, 6-0 loss to the German.
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