Maria Sharapova’s return to WTA tournament play after more than a month away was short-lived as the Russian suffered an upset loss to American Sloane Stephens 2-6, 7-6 (5), 6-3 in the second round of the Western & Southern Open on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
In a match that lasted 2 hours, 22 minutes, Stephens overcame double faults on two match points to pick up her first victory over Sharapova in four meetings.<\/p>\n
“I started the match off pretty well, but when you put yourself in a really good position, you can’t let it go,” Sharapova said. “That’s what I did tonight. I didn’t continue what I was doing well for the first set and a half, and that hurt me.<\/p>\n
Sharapova, the 2011 W&S champion and a 2010 finalist, showed no traces of the hip injury that had kept her sidelined since a second-round loss at Wimbledon but paid the price for trying to end points too quickly.<\/p>\n
“I stopped being patient. I started making a lot more errors, especially off the first ball \u2014 just errors that I shouldn’t make. I haven’t played in a long time, but I can’t make that excuse for myself because I’ve got to be ready from the first match.”<\/p>\n
Jimmy Connors, who won the tournament 41 years ago, watched from the stands in his first match as Sharapova’s coach. She hired Connors, the 1972 champion and a 1986 finalist, in mid-July.<\/p>\n
Fourteenth-seeded Jelena Jankovic, the 2009 champion and 2011 runner-up, advanced to the second round with a 7-6 (5), 5-7, 6-2 win over Wimbledon finalist Sabine Lisiski.<\/p>\n
In earlier action, second-ranked Victoria Azarenka held off an upset bid by qualifier Vania King to pull out a 6-1, 7-6 (6) win and advance to the third round. Azarenka was down 3-0 in the second set but forced the tiebreaker.<\/p>\n
Azarenka, who has been bothered by a lower back injury, was playing her first match since losing in the final of the Southern California Open two weeks prior.<\/p>\n
“The beginning of the second set wasn’t very good for me,” Azarenka said. “There were quite a few unforced errors and just really fast mistakes, which didn’t happen in the first set.”<\/p>\n
John Isner defeated Florian Mayer 6-3, 6-4, and Grigor Dimitrov defeated Brian Baker 6-3, 6-2. Third-seeded David Ferrer edged 102nd-ranked American Ryan Harrison 7-6 (5), 3-6, 6-4.<\/p>\n
Varvara Lepchenko of the United States advanced with a 6-2, 2-6, 6-2 win over Flavia Pennetta, and Jamie Hampton needed three sets to overcome Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 7-5, 4-6, 6-3.<\/p>\n
Alize Cornet rallied past Ana Ivanovic 2-6, 7-6 (8), 6-4.<\/p>\n
Sorana Cirstea, the 21st-ranked Romanian who lost to No. 1 Serena Williams in the finals of the Rogers Cup in Toronto on Sunday, withdrew from her first-round match against Yanina Wickmayer.<\/p>\n
Cirstea was replaced by No. 43 Monica Niculescu, who lost in this past weekend’s qualifying but stayed around in case a spot opened up in the singles main draw and to play doubles. The Romanian capitalized on her second chance with a 6-1, 6-2 win over the 58th-ranked Wickmayer.<\/p>\n
No. 10 seed Caroline Wozniacki easily advanced with a 6-1, 6-1 win over Shuai Peng.<\/p>\n
Gilles Simon was forced to retire because of a strained hip against Vasek Pospisil, who was leading 6-3, 1-1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maria Sharapova’s return to WTA tournament play after more than a month away was short-lived as the Russian suffered an upset loss to American Sloane Stephens 2-6, 7-6 (5), 6-3 in the second round of the Western & Southern Open on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
In a match that lasted 2 hours, 22 minutes, Stephens overcame double faults on two match points to pick up her first victory over Sharapova in four meetings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":9159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}