Dinara Safina Loses Number One Spot

1 month ago 06th Oct 12:40

Dinara Safina's run of bad luck continued at the China Open as she was dumped out of the competition by local favourite Zhang Shuai.

This defeat comes just seven days after she was knocked out of the Pan Pacific event in Tokyo in the second round.

And once again her came was littered with errors as she served twelve double faults to lose in straight sets 7-5 7-6 (7-5).

Serena Williams needed to go further than Safina in the competition to regain the world number one spot and a victory over Ekaterina Makarova.

After a scrappy opening match on Sunday Williams was back to her ruthless self as the world number one ranking was in sight.

The twenty eight year old has won the Australian Open and Wimbledon so far this year as well as well reaching the quarter finals of the French and semi finals at last month's U.S. Open.

But Makarova was no match for the power, pace and precision of Williams as she wrapped up a 6-3 6-2 win in less than an hour which sees her top the rankings for the second time this year.

But there were more shocks for the seeds as third seed Venus Williams lost to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova for the second time in a week.

It was the talented Russian that saw off the American's challenge in Tokyo last week and Venus once again struggled against the teenager.

Speaking to the BBC after the match Williams said: "She played really well, unfortunately sometimes I made errors too soon in the play"

"Twelve double faults didn't help me today, I wasn't counting those, though."

Azarenk and Jankovic were other seeds who fell in the second round as Azarenka fell to last wee's champion Maria Sharapova.

Despite retiring in the Pan Pacific final against Sharapova at the weekend Jankovic was also in action but was beaten 4-6  7-5  6-2 by Peng.

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw