It was mixed luck for seeds on Wednesday at the Qatar Ladies Open – three advanced and three suffered losses in the second round.
Top seed Caroline Wozniacki belongs to the lucky part, and continuing the good form that took her to Dubai title last week, she defeated Nadia Petrova 6-3 6-2. Also victorious was second seed and 2008 WTA Qatar Open finalist Vera Zvonareva, who beat Dominika Cibulkova 6-1 6-2. Just to remind you, the tournament wasn’t even held in 2009 and 2010. Another successful seed, No.5 Jelena Jankovic, avenged the defeat of her compatriot Bojana Jovanovski in the previous round and took out the young Serbian hope’s conqueror, Sania Mirza, 6-0 6-1.
Now let’s move on to the unfortunate seeds. No.3 seed and world No.5 Francesca Schiavone lost her opening match of the tournament to Peng Shuai 7-5 6-3. The 38th-ranked Chinese is a qualifier into the draw, and supposedly, that’s why she had more time to adapt to the court. Since it’s Peng’s second career Top 5 victory, and the first in six years, on paper it is one of the her greatest results. However, the Chinese doesn’t consider the win too big, and states her win over Kim Clijsters, who was on a winning streak of about 30 matches, in 2005 in San Diego, as her greatest achievement.
Lucky loser Klara Zakopalova earned her fifth Top 10 win with a 6-2 6-1 victory over fourth seed Li Na. Eighth seed Shahar Peer also lost, in exactly an hour, to Marion Bartoli 6-1 6-0. (photos: Johan Rivera, source: WTA Tour)
