Kuznetsova Loses Again Early at WTA Los Angeles

Posted on August 11, 2005

Svetlana Kuznetsova has admitted she is burned out and looking for motivation this year as she approaches her defense of the US Open title, and things took another downturn on Wednesday when the No. 2-seeded Russian was eliminated in her opening-round match 6-4, 6-4 by the equally-struggling Greek Eleni Daniilidou at the WTA stop in Los Angeles.

"It's horrible," said Kuznetsova, who suffered her second consecutive first-round loss, and has not won a title in more than 10 months. "I can't find my game. I don't have confidence and everything comes from the head. If I keep playing like this, I might as well go home."

The only other upset on the day was 33-year-old slicer-and-dicer Conchita Martinez taking out No. 14 Gisela Dulko in straight sets.

Seeded winners on the day were (3) Elena Dementieva (d. Stosur), (4) Nadia Petrova (d. Craybas), (5) Kim Clijsters (d. Sprem), (9) Daniela Hantuchova (d. (Q) Haynes from a set down), (12) Dinara Safina (d. (Q) Fujiwara), (13) Francesca Schiavone (d. Peng from a set down), (16) Anna Chakvetadze (d. Benesova in three), and (17) Marion Bartoli (d. (Q) Sun from a set down 6-1 in the third).

"I was struggling with my serve the whole match and she was putting so much pressure on her serve," said Dementieva, rebounding from a first-round loss last week. "I couldn't really do what I wanted in the right motion."

Unseeded winners were American Lisa Raymond (d. (Q) Nakamura from a set down), and two qualifiers in Italian Tathiana Garbin (d. (LL) Obata) and the Ukraine's Kateryna Bondarenko (d. Zheng 6-0 in the third).

Mary Pierce, who hoped she had put her injury woes behind her after regaining her fitness, was forced to pull from the event Wednesday with a thigh sprain suffered in practice.

"I was hitting serves when I felt it," Pierce said. "I saw the trainers and it was feeling better, but the pain came back. I've tried to do some movement, but it hurts. I'm really disappointed, because I'm playing very well right now...I am going to go home and have treatment. I'll take a few days and hopefully play Toronto (next week)."

On Thursday's schedule are Lepchenko vs. (13) Schiavone, (5) Clijsters vs. Marat's little sis Safina, (1) Sharapova vs. (16)Chakvetadze in an all-Russian, Martinez vs. Daniilidou, (3) Dementieva vs. Bartoli, (Q) K.Bondarenko vs. (9) Hantuchova, (15) Koukalova vs. (4) Petrova, and Raymond vs. (Q) Garbin.