Australian women’s involvement at the China Open is down to just one singles player after Kimberly Birrell and Storm Hunter were both second-round casualties.<\/p>\n
World number 41 Birrell suffered a 6-4, 6-4 loss to Czech Marie Bouzkova at the WTA 1000 event in Beijing on Saturday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Birrell, 28, who won the Korea Open last Sunday with a win over compatriot Maya Joint in the final, raced out to a 3-1 first-set lead before dropping serve twice to lose it in 42 minutes.<\/p>\n
Down 3-0 in the second, Birrell lifted and won the next four games but was broken twice more to see her involvement in the Chinese capital come to a premature end.<\/p>\n
For Bouzkova, the 28-year-old 18th seed, a meeting with China’s Zheng Qinwen awaits.<\/p>\n
The 2024 Olympic champion was leading Anna Kalinskaya 6-7 (4\/7), 6-4, 3-0 when the Russian retired.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Earlier, Queensland veteran and former doubles world number one Storm Hunter was beaten 6-2, 6-2 by Maria Sakkari in just 73 minutes.<\/p>\n
The 182nd-ranked Hunter failed to join 20-year-old fellow Aussie Taylah Preston in round three, losing serve six times in her latest hardcourt tournament clash in Asia.<\/p>\n
Next up for Sakkari, the Greek 25th seed and former world number three, is Elina Svitolina.<\/p>\n
The sixth-seeded Ukrainian came from a set down to eliminate Czech Katerina Siniakova, 1-6, 6-4, 6-2.<\/p>\n
Shock of the day came with newly crowned world number one Elena Rybakina crashing out \u200c3-6, 6-4, 6-3 to unseeded Alina Charaeva in the second round.<\/p>\n
It couldn’t have been a worse start to her reign as the number one as Rybakina lost in her first match since defeating four-times major winner Aryna Sabalenka to capture the US Open title last month.<\/p>\n
Charaeva, a 24-year-old Russian-born Armenian ranked 118th \u200bin the world, etched her name into the record books by becoming the lowest-ranked competitor since the introduction of the WTA rankings in 1975 to rally from a set down to defeat a world number one.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, there were wins for third seed Coco Gauff, eighth seed Iga Swiatek, 21st seed Ann Li and 24th seed Jelena Ostapenko.<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian women’s involvement at the China Open is down to just one singles player after Kimberly Birrell and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":915350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,106772,20336,330592,85,93443,747],"class_list":["post-915349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-china-open","tag-elena-rybakina","tag-kimberley-birrell","tag-sports","tag-storm-hunter","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/915350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}