THE CANADIAN PRESS
MONTREAL — Top seed Ana Ivanovic was knocked out of the US$1.34 million Rogers Cup on Thursday night by Tamira Paszek of Austria 6-2, 1-6, 6-2, opening the door for the world’s second-ranked player Jelena Jankovic to take over the top spot in women’s tennis by week’s end.
Paszek, a 17-year-old ranked number 94 in the world coming into this event, took control of both the first and third sets early by rolling out to a 3-0 lead in the first and a 4-0 lead in the decisive third set.
Paszek had triple match point with Ivanovic serving at 5-2 in the third, and on the second one Ivanovic put her shot into the net. Paszek dropped her racket and held her head in her hands as the Uniprix Stadium crowd rose to its feet for an ovation.
"I didn’t expect this," an emotional Paszek told the crowd. "Ana’s such a great person and great athlete, I had to stay focused on every point."
After exchanging a kiss with Ivanovic at the net, Paszek ran into the arms of her coach Larri Passos sitting in the front row.
"I was almost crying in his arms," said Paszek, whose father Ariff Mohamed lived in Toronto for about 15 years, holds a Canadian passport and still has family living in Montreal, Toronto and Calgary.
Ivanovic revealed after her second round match Wednesday that she was playing with a sore right thumb she injured practising about two weeks, yet she refused to use it as an excuse for a lacklustre performance in a three set win over Petra Kvitova.
The thumb was taped for Thursday’s match against Paszek, but there was no clear evidence it was preventing Ivanovic from making shots. Rather, it was Paszek’s tenacity and some unforced errors from Ivanovic that were her downfall.
Serbia’s Jankovic took out the lone Canadian remaining in the singles draw Thursday with an easy 6-3, 6-2 win over Stephanie Dubois of Laval, Que.
It marked the second straight day that Jankovic knocked out a local fan favourite after she made quick work of Aleksandra Wozniak of Blainville, Que., 6-0, 6-4 in Wednesday evening’s final match.
"It’s not so nice for me to beat two Canadians," Jankovic said. "What can I do? The crowd will hate me, but that’s just the luck of the draw. But I think they’re both really great players. They have done quite well, so I think they have good potential, a good future in front of them."
Jankovic could take over the world’s top ranking if she were to make the final here, and the only seeded player potentially standing in her way is the 10th seed Marion Bartoli of France.
Jankovic will next face 19-year-old Slovakian Dominika Cibulkova, the world’s 31st ranked player who eliminated the 12th seed Nadia Petrova 7-6 (2), 6-2.
Cibulkova beat Petrova for the second time in two weeks to continue her climb up the world rankings. Her win Thursday was her ninth against a top-25 opponent, including her straight set victory over fifth-seeded Elena Dementieva in the second round here and the last two against Petrova.
If Jankovic is able to get past Cibulkova, she would face the winner of Friday’s match between Bartoli and world number 33 Ai Sugiyama of Japan.
Though Jankovic’s victory Thursday was not quite as dominant as a night earlier, it was close.
Dubois looked early on as though she may be able to hang in with the long, powerful Jankovic, earning a break point opportunity in the opening game and winning her first service game at love.
But a 47-minute rain delay effectively eliminated what little momentum Dubois may have gained from the start, and ultimately Jankovic broke her serve to go up 4-2 and finished off the set 6-3.
With the second set tied at 2-2, Jankovic gave up only a point in breaking serve to go up 3-2 and didn’t lose a game the rest of the way.
Dubois gave the Uniprix Stadium crowd something to cheer about when she earned three break points at 5-2, but Jankovic took the next five points to win the match and eliminate the final piece of local flavour in the singles draw.
"I can say I’m happy (with) the way I played," said Dubois. "But you have to be at your best to play against the No. 2 in the world. I felt the pressure of her hits. They were really hard."
Dubois did win her second round doubles match with partner Sabine Lisicki of Germany, upsetting the eighth-seeded Czech pairing of Eva Hrdinova and Vladimira Uhlirova. Dubois and Lisicki will face top seeds Cara Black of Zimbabwe and American Liezel Huber on Friday afternoon.
Also playing in doubles Friday will be Marie-Eve Pelletier of Repentigny, Que., who has reached the third match with partner Tamarine Tanasugarn of Thailand without playing a single match, benefiting from two straight walkovers.
Fourth seed Svetlana Kuznetsova got all she could handle from Portuguese phenom Michelle Larcher de Brito on centre court before winning 7-5, 2-6, 6-4.
"It was a really tough match," said Larcher de Brito, 15, whose performance here will make her the highest-ranking Portugese female player of all time next week. "It was a fun match actually. I enjoyed myself. It was a good fight."
Kuznetsova will now meet her Russian Olympic doubles partner, seventh-seeded Dinara Safina, who easily ousted number nine seed Patty Schnyder of Switzerland 6-2, 6-2.
"She’s playing at her best level probably for the last (few) years," Kuznetsova said of her quarter-final opponent. "She’s very consistent, she makes finals."
Japanese veteran Ai Sugiyama, 33, got a walkover into the quarter-finals after third seed Maria Sharapova pulled out of the tournament with a shoulder injury following her three-set second round win Wednesday evening.
Sugiyama will face France’s Bartoli, who knocked out the sixth seed Anna Chakvetadze of Russia 4-6, 7-5, 7-6 (4) in a marathon match that ended nearly four hours after it began, with a 50-minute rain delay in between.
Chakvetadze was serving for the match up 5-4 and at deuce in the second set when the rain delay hit. She was unable to convert any of her three match points in that game, and Bartoli took advantage of the momentum swing of the rain delay to win the final three games of the set. Bartoli also had two match points on her serve in the third set, but Chakvetadze fought back to force a tiebreak, only to lose for the third time in four meetings between the two.