Top seed Caroline Wozniacki and freshly crowned French Open champion Francesca Schiavone both lost on a day of upsets at the Eastbourne International on Tuesday.
Wozniacki, the reigning champion, fell 6-4, 1-6, 6-3 to France’s Aravane Rezai in the first round, while second-seeded Italian Schiavone lost 7-5, 6-3 against Romanian world No. 57 Sorana Cirstea.
Wozniacki was playing her first match on grass since the Wimbledon fourth round last summer.
PHOTO: AFP
“I would have liked to have gotten more matches,” she said. “But I will now keep my head up and plan some practice matches to prepare.”
Two more seeds also lost, with 2008 champion Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland, the fourth seed, going out to Belarus’s Victoria Azarenka, 7-6 (7/2), 6-1.
Russian Elena Makarova accounted for Italy’s sixth-seeded Flavia Pennetta, 7-6 (7/5), 6-1.
Meanwhile, Kim Clijsters came through well in her first match in seven weeks after a foot injury, defeating compatriot Yanina Wickmayer 6-1, 6-1.
“It was not bad for the first match in a while,” said the 2005 champion. “I was happy with it. Conditions were not easy, the wind was always switching, it was another thing to focus on.”
“I tried to be aggressive when I had to. I was consistent and that’s not easy at the start of the grass season,” she said. “It was a good match to get over and done with, I felt no pains in the foot today so that’s good.”
Rezai, a winner on clay last month in Madrid over Venus Williams, came up trumps in her first career meeting with Wozniacki, who stood second in the world until being replaced by Williams after the French Open.
“This was not an unexpected win for me,” world No. 19 Rezai said. “I know I have the game to play well and beat big players like I did in the weeks before Paris. I also have the game for grass.”
Rezai, a semi-finalist on grass last week at Birmingham, pounded 10 aces past the Dane in a victory lasting one and three-quarter hours.
The Frenchwoman will contest a quarter-final place in the Wimbledon tune-up event with Maria-Jose Martinez Sanchez of Spain.
There were also upsets on the men’s side, as Spanish second seed Feliciano Lopez had to quit with a shoulder injury to hand a 6-3, 5-4 victory to British wild card James Ward, only the second Tour-level victory for the world No. 342.
Rainer Schuettler of Germany started with a 6-2, 6-3 victory over Kazakhstan’s Andrey Golubev, while Lu Yen-hsun of Taiwan defeated Karol Beck of Slovakia 6-4, 6-4.
In the second round, Illya Marchenko of the Ukraine knocked out sixth-seeded Argentine Horacio Zeballos 7-6 (7-2), 6-3.
■UNICEF OPEN
AFP, S’HERTOGENBOSCH, THE NETHERLANDS
Croatian top seed Ivan Ljubicic was knocked out of the ATP-WTA grasscourt event in S’hertogenbosch in the second round on Tuesday after losing to Colombia’s Alejandro Falla.
Ljubicic, the world No. 15 and a champion here in 2007, served 12 aces but converted just one of eight break points and eventually went down 6-2, 7-6 (8/6) to the world number 65.
Falla will face Xavier Malisse in the quarter-finals after the Belgian defeated Daniel Brands of Brazil in three sets, 4-6, 6-1, 7-5.
Eighth seed Benjamin Becker of Germany and Serbian seventh seed Janko Tipsarevic both booked their spots in the second round.
Becker beat Finland’s Jarkko Nieminen 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, while Tipsarevic overcame Frenchman Jeremy Chardy 6-3, 6-4 to break a three-and-a-half-month losing streak.
Russian third seed Maria Kirilenko was the biggest casualty in the women’s draw, after she retired at 6-3, 3-3 down in her second-round tie with Belgium’s Kirsten Flipkens due to an abdominal injury.
Ana Ivanovic, the Serbian former world No. 1, was eliminated after losing 6-4, 6-7 (4/7), 6-1 to Bosnian-born German seventh seed Andrea Petkovic.
Doping fears prevented former US Open champion Emma Raducanu from treating insect bites on the eve of the Australian Open, she said, with players increasingly wary about ingesting contaminated substances. The British player was speaking in the wake of high-profile doping cases involving Iga Swiatak and Jannik Sinner. “I would say all of us are probably quite sensitive to what we take on board, what we use,” the 22-year-old said, recalling an incident on Friday. “I got really badly bitten by, I don’t know what, like ants, mosquitoes, something. I’m allergic, I guess,” she added. The bites “flared up and swelled up really a
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