Second seed Svetlana Kuznetsova lost to fifteenth seed Sybille Bammer 6-3 7-6(8) in the third round of the $2.5 million Qatar Total Open.
Kuznetsova, who was runner-up last year in Doha, had her chances to stay in the match. In the second set she had multiple set points, and also managed to save three match points.
The fourth Bammer’s match point, which in the end closed out the match, was very tense. In the windy conditions the players struggled — Kuznetsova to stay in the match, Bammer to finally finish it – and three times their long rallies were interrupted by a flying paper. The two of them were very concentrated, and didn’t seem to be distracted by this, but the rallies were so tense and long and the fact it was on the match point was stressful to watch.
In the quarterfinals, Austria’s Sybille Bammer will play Russia’s Vera Zvonareva, who beat eleventh-seeded Dinara Safina.
