Safina dumped by Taiwan qualifier

13 April 2012

World no1 Dinara Safina suffered a shock 7-6, 4-6, 7-5 defeat at the hands of Taiwanese qualifier Chang Kai-Chen at the Pan Pacific Open today.

The Russian, who had been given a first-round bye, struggled from the start against a player 131 places below her in the world rankings and lost the first set tie-break 7-5.

Safina rallied to take the second with a thumping backhand, pumping her fist and screeching "Come on!"

But after seizing an early break in the deciding set,her nervousness resurfaced as she tamely surrendered her serve with a double-fault at 5-4 up.

Chang kept her cool and completed the biggest win of her career by forcing Safina into a wild forehand on her third match point after two hours and 44 minutes.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Sign up you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy notice .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT