The early rounds of Rome saw a number of tough battles for the top seeds and not all of them survived.
(Rank/Seed)
1/1 Serena extended her winning run to 20 straight matches, avenging her sister Venus's first round loss to Britain's very own Robson 62 62 in the second round. However, Serena predicts Laura will be a great player and at times in the match she genuinely outhit the number one, hitting more winners than Serena!
4/4 Radwanska continues to struggle as she was edged by qualifier Halep 67(2) 61 62. Radwanska struggles on clay and even though she hadn't dropped a set against the Romanian in their past three meetings, Halep's greater tactical awareness helped her dominate the second and third sets. Radwanska has struggled to win easily lately against lower ranked players and has now lost in two successive huge clay court events in the second round as her French Open hopes look distinctly bleak!
8/8 Kvitova once again was pushed to three sets on clay, beating Lisicki 64 06 75, having trailed 1-3 in the third. Kvitova let an easy miss distract her in the second set as she didn't even hit one winner! However, this second round means that Kvitova has now won 5 of the 6 three set matches she's played on clay, which will no doubt give her confidence.
9/10 Wozniacki lost a heart breaker to Jovanovski 26 64 76(5) in almost three hours. Wozniacki had won both their previous encounters and the Serb hadn't won a match since January. Wozniacki led 4-0, then served for the match at 5-4 and even led 5-2 in the tiebreak. Still, despite cramps, Jovanovksi played much more aggressively and pulled off only her second top 10 win. Wozniacki is in a real hole with this first round loss; she's now lost 4 straight matches!
10/9 Stosur got her first win since Fed Cup with a 62 63 victory over Hsieh in the first round.
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