Third seed Daniela Hantuchova was upset by Croatian qualifier Karolina Sprem in the second round of the Bausch & Lomb Championships. Final score: 6-3 1-6 6-3.
Sprem is currently ranked 296th in the world, but she was once a top-20 player. Sprem injured her wrist at the Italian Open in May and returned to the tour only two weeks ago, when she fell in qualifying at the Sony Ericsson Open. This week Sprem won two qualifying matches, beat Japanese veteran Ai Sugiyama in her main draw opener, then stunned world No.10 Hantuchova for the third top-10 win of her career, and first since 2004.
Slovakia’s Hantuchova thinks her loss is simply the outcome of Sprem’s good play: “I don’t think I did too many things wrong. She was just playing incredible, going for every shot and almost everything going inside the court. Today she was just too good.”
Other seeded players that have been knocked out of the Bausch & Lomb Championships so far include No.5 seed Patty Schnyder who lost to Elena Vesnina, No.9 Sybille Bammer who was defeated by Alize Cornet, No.14 Victoria Azarenka who fell to Dominika Cibulkova, and No.4 Marion Bartoli who succumbed to Olga Govortsova. Interestingly, all these upsets happened in three sets.
