BRISBANE – The women’s draw at the Brisbane International was thrown wide open on Tuesday after top seeds Samantha Stosur and Shahar Peer were bundled out in the second round by unheralded opponents.
World No.6 Stosur was beaten by fellow Australian Jarmila Groth 6-2, 6-4 in the tournament’s biggest shock, while earlier in the day the Czech Republic’s Lucie Safarova outlasted second seed Peer 3-6, 6-1, 7-5. With third seed Nadia Petrova losing on Monday, Frenchwoman Marion Bartoli is now the highest ranked player left in the women’s draw. Stosur cut a disconsolate figure as she left the Pat Rafter Arena after being outplayed by occasional hitting partner Groth. She started slowly against Groth, quickly finding herself 4-0 down and unable to recover in time to save the first set.
Stosur opened far more confidently in the second and raced to a 4-1 lead but Groth refused to concede and broke back to get the set back on serve. Earlier, Safarova drew on boyfriend Tomas Berdych’s Wimbledon heroics to deny Peer a place in the quarter-finals. Safarova saved a match point in the third set before eventually claiming a tense 3-6, 6-1,
7-5 win over Peer in a two-and-a-half-hour match that never reached any great heights.
Becker holds nerve to oust Verdasco: Germany’s Benjamin Becker held his nerve to dump third-seeded Spaniard Fernando Verdasco from the first round of the Brisbane International tennis tournament here on Tuesday. Becker demolished Verdasco in the first set and was serving for the match at 5-4 in the second, only to falter and allow the Spaniard to break back.
Verdasco, the world Number 9, then levelled proceedings when he raced away with the tiebreak, but Becker regrouped and came out firing in the third, breaking Verdasco immediately and holding the advantage to win 6-1, 6-7 (2/7), 6-3. Meanwhile, top seed Robin Soderling cruised through to the 2nd round with an emphatic win over US qualifier Ryan Harrison. Harrison had no answer to the Swede’s power and precision, the world Number 5 winning 6-2, 6-4 in 65 minutes despite arriving in Brisbane only late Sunday night.
