Top 3 seeds in Tapei out in round 1

In St Petersburg and Taipei City more first round matches have been played and two major upsets occurred, albeit one by retirement.

In Taipei City Kiki Bertens, the world number 28, was playing Vera Zvonareva, the former Grand Slam finalist, ranked number 2 in 2010, who played her last match in Poland in April 2015 before marrying and giving birth in 2016.

Her return was in Istanbul, in a lower tier ITF tournament on 27 March 2017. Her first win on that circuit came in July 2017 in Egypt.

Vera’s current ranking is 197 and she started shakily against Bertens, losing her opening service game.

However four straight games ultimately gave her the set against an obviously struggling Dutch player.

Bertens was ill and retired at the sets conclusion - not the way Zvonareva wanted to register her first win over a top 30 player since her return to tennis but that is the story.

The bigger upset was in St Petersburg, without mitigation, and was from qualifier Elena Rybakina, ranked 450 from Russia, and at 18, ten years younger than her Swiss opponent Timea Bacsinszky, currently in the world’s top 50.

The teenager won 6-4 6-3, and in a match decided on return of serve Rybakina won 50% of points on the Swiss serve and Bacsinszky won slightly less on the Russian serve at 42%.

Other winners on Day Two of main draw matches in St Petersburg were:

Daria Kasatkina (8) defeated qualifier Viktoria Kuzmova 1-6 6-4 6-1.

Dominika Cibulková defeated Sorana Cirstea 7-5 6-2.

Julia Goerges (5) defeated Maria Sakkara 6-2 7-6(5).

Qualifier Roberta Vinci defeated another qualifier Tereza Martincová 6-2 6-2.

Irina-Camelia Begu defeated Andrea Petkovic 7-6(5) 6-1.

After losing the second seed on Day One of the main draw matches, Taipei City saw the loss of numbers one and three seeds, leaving the tournament wide open from the start.

All but first round matches have been completed and the second batch done are these:

Ana Bogdan defeated Shuai Peng (1) 6-4 6-1 and next up Eugenie Bouchard 

Wildcard Eugenie Bouchard defeated Lin Zhu 1-6 7-5 2-0 retired

Yafan Wang defeated Risa Ozaki 6-2 6-4 and will play Pauline Parmentier (8) 

Pauline Parmentier (8) defeated Kurumi Nara 1-6 6-4 6-1 (same score line as Kasatkina v Kuzmova in St Petersburg)

Johanna Larsson defeated lucky loser in qualifying Jing-Jing Lu 6-3 6-1 and will play Magda Linette (7).

Magda Linette (7) defeated qualifier Xinyun Han 6-2 6-0.

Sabine Lisicki defeated qualifier Yuxuan Zhang 6-3 1-6 7-6(3) and will play Nao Hibino.

Nao Hibino defeated Samantha Stosur (3) 7-6(6) 6-2.

Timea Babos (4) defeated Arina Rodionova 6-3 6-2 and will play qualifier Dalila Jakupovic.

Slovakian Qualifier Dalila Jakupovic defeated Australian qualifier Lizette Cabrera 6-0 6-1.