Third seed Tatiana Panova of Russia was upset by Israel's Shahar Peer in the first round of the WTA Hyderabad Open at the Sports Authority of Andhra Pradesh stadium in Hyderabad on Monday.
Peer, a wild card entrant, beat Panova 6-3, 7-6 to enter round two of the tournament.
The 17-year-old from Tel Aviv was on the ball right from game one. She won the first set easily and looked like cruising to victory when she broke Panova's serve in the fifth game of the set to go 3-2 up.
However, at 4-3 Peer served up a lacklustre game. Panova induced a backhand error at 15-15 and a double-fault saw the Israeli face a break point. Panova made most of the opportunity to level the scores.
The Russian was hanging by the shirt and retrieved a lot of balls to push the set into a tie-breaker. But her experience fell short as Peer charged forward, taking a 4-0 lead and Panova couldn't make up for the difference, eventually losing the tie-break 7-3.
"I knew she's a good player and since she's small I had to move her around to clinch the points," said Peer after the game.
Still in her last year in school, Peer has made a good start to the year. Before this tournament, she entered the quarter-finals of two WTA events after qualifying. In 2004, she rose from 709 to 132 in the WTA rankings.
"She's a very good player," said Panova of her young opponent.
"I have been playing too many tournaments and after flying from Tokyo [from the Pan-Pacific Open] I was a bit fatigued going into the match and I don't think I was really surprised that she beat me," added the 29-year-old Panova.
India's Ankita Bhambri, the other wild card entrant, though was forced to bite the dust in the first round. She lost 3-6, 2-6 to Ukraine's Alyona Bondarenko.
Bhambri, playing only her second main draw match [she qualified for the same tournament last year], hardly posed a challenge to the ninth seed.
"I had a chance to play against a better player," said Bhambri, "She had better groundstrokes and I was always on the run. The European girls are stronger and we just have to learn to play against their power."
Results:
Singles (first round): Alyona Bondarenko beat Ankita Bhambri 6-3, 6-2; Roberta Vinci beat Emilia Salerni 6-3, 6-1; Marie-Eve Pelletier beat Ekaterina Bychkova 2-6, 7-5, 7-5; Shahar Peer beat (3) Tatiana Panova 6-3, 7-6 (3), Tzipora Obziler beat Lubomira Kurhajcova 6-2, 6-2.
