Samantha Stosur lost 6-2 6-4 in the first round of the Apia International Sydney to Francesca Schiavone, which is her second straight early loss at a tournament on her home soil this year, ahead of the Australian Open, and the big expectations and her own desire to do well at the Grand Slam in her country, following her US Open title win, seem to be catching up with big-hitting Stosur.

When she won her maiden major title in September 2011 by beating Serena Williams in the final, Stosur couldn't wait to start the same quest in Australia, but now that the moment has come, she lost her second match in Brisbane and her opening match in Sydney. The 27-year-old is admitting to be falling under the pressure:

That's what makes the loss so difficult, Melbourne is coming up and I want to start playing well. I think today I certainly didn't handle that (expectation) side of things at all well.

I went into it with the right frame of mind, and got out there and it (the crowd support) kind of hit me. It did kind of surprise me how much it kind of hamstrung me today.

Stosur played the Australian Open main draw nine times and has never been past the fourth round. Do you think she will overcome the pressure and improve her Australian Open result armed with a Grand Slam triumph experience? (photo: Stephane Martinache)

Never in their eight previous matches in the period of eight years, from 2002 to 2010, had Francesca Schiavone beaten Venus Williams, and at the December 3rd exhibition event in Milan, the Italian managed to beat both the Williams sisters, on top of showing her dancing skills by entertaining the 11,000 crowd to Michael Jackson's "Beat It" with Flavia Pennetta.

Schiavone defeated Venus 7-5 7-3, and then Serena 7-3 8-10 8-6. Pennetta also beat Venus, 7-6 7-2, but lost to Serena 6-8 7-3 7-3. The Williams sisters won the doubles 3-7 8-6 8-6.

Neither of the Williams sisters played competitive tennis since the US Open, however they did play another exhibition match recently, last month in Columbia, and Venus defeated Serena 6-4 7-6(5). (source: ESPN)

Top seed Francesca Schiavone lost in the opening round of the Hansol Korea Open to Vera Dushevina. It is actually Dushevina’s third victory over Schiavone in their four matches, but the first one in straight sets.

The world No.8 Schiavone, 57 places higher in the WTA rankings than Dushevina, lost the first set in a tiebreak 7-6(4) and succumbed in the second set 6-2.

The highest seed at the tournament is now No.2 Marion Bartoli, who defeated Nuria Llagostera Vives 6-2 6-2 in the first round and will play Vania King in the second. Bartoli won their last two meetings, including this year in Brisbane 6-1 6-2. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

John Bolan, friend, reader and contributor of Women's Tennis Blog, is at the US Open and he sent me his summary of the second day. I wanted to share with you John's view of the exciting first round match between Galina Voskoboeva and Francesca Schiavone.

The player who lost and should have won was Galina Voskoboeva playing against No.7 seed Francesca Schiavone in Louis Armstrong Stadium before thousands of fans.

Francesca started out winning the first four games until Galina got comfortable on the large court. Galina won 9 out of the next 12 games losing the first set 6-3 and winning the second 6-1. The players took an off-court break before the third set. After the rest, Francesca came out firing, winning the first 3 games on her way to a 6-4 victory. Francesca never won more than one game in a row except for those 2 starts in sets one and three.

Galina was the one who looked like the Top 10 player. She won the same number of games (13) as she dominated the stats hitting 32 winners to Francesca's 17 and winning every service stat. She had only one double fault compared to a horrible 16 for Francesca. Galina's groundstrokes were so perfect, but at key times she missed on important points.

After signing a few autographs, Galina received a thunderous ovation as she walked off the court.

The world No.87 Galina also is a top doubles player and is well coached by the former great Russian player, Alina Jidkova. We will be hearing much more in the coming months from Galina Voskoboeva. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

China's Li Na has just made a tennis revolution – the 29-year-old defeated last year's winner Francesca Schiavone in the final of Roland Garros and the sport not so popular in China is now expected to bloom, or at least to start blooming, and when you have a population of so many people in question than it's a really big deal. As for the very championship match, Li was solid, had precise shots and was in charge more or less throughout the match, which can be described as one calm Grand Slam final, without much fuss and excessively expressed emotions.

The world No.7 Li had a straightforward win in the first set. In 39 minutes the Chinese sixth seed faced no break points, took Schiavone's serve in the fifth game and simply marched on to take the set 6-4. The second set Li continued in the similar fashion, breaking Schiavone's serve in the very beginning and at 3-1 Li had a great opportunity to bring the match too close to an end, but she netted a clear shot and the world No.5 Schiavone slowly managed to get back into the match when she leveled at 4-4. Then both players held their serves until the tiebreak in which Li started shining again and actually won it without losing a point! Final score: 6-4 7-6(0). Read more »