Beaten Bartoli sees Istanbul hopes slip away

MOSCOW (AFP) –

Sweden’s Sofia Arvidsson returns a ball to France’s Marion Bartoli during their Kremlin Cup tennis tournament match. Bartoli saw her slender hopes of sneaking into the season-ending WTA Championships by the back door suffer another setback Wednesday when she was sent crashing out of the $1.5 million Kremlin Cup.

France’s Marion Bartoli saw her slender hopes of sneaking into the season-ending WTA Championships by the back door suffer another setback Wednesday when she was sent crashing out of the $1.5 million Kremlin Cup.

The second seeded Bartoli slumped to a 6-3, 6-0 second round loss to Swedish world number 46 Sofia Arvidsson who recorded her fifth win over Geneva resident Bartoli in their seventh head-to-head meeting.

Bartoli, who is 10th in the rankings, was hoping to leapfrog Australia’s Samantha Stosur, the world number nine and top seed in Moscow, in the race to be the first alternate for the eight-woman WTA Championship in Istanbul next week.

“Today my body just refused to execute what my mind was telling it to do,” Bartoli said.

“Besides, the surface here is very slow and it didn’t fit my play very well. Of course it would have been better for me to go to Istanbul as the first substitute but it’s rewarding for me to get a chance to go there.”

Arvidsson produced three breaks to take the opening set in 39 minutes, while Bartoli broke back only on two occasions.

In the second set, Arvidsson broke three more times to secure her quarter-final spot.

“I am very happy to win this match to reach the quarter-finals,” Arvidsson said. “Marion is a great competitor, a top 10 player, and I knew I would have to be at my best.

“My strategy was to focus on the way I wanted to play and move her around the court. I love to play indoors — I grew up in Sweden, so the conditions here in Moscow really suit me.”

Third seed, and former world number one, Caroline Wozniacki meanwhile kept her chances of finishing the season in the top 10 by beating Poland’s Urszula Radwanska 6-1, 6-3 to also a earn a place in the quarter-finals.

Defending champion Dominika Cibulkova, the fifth-seeded Slovakian, cruised into the quarter-finals with a 6-2, 6-3 win over Bulgaria’s Tsvetana Pironkova.

However, eighth-seeded Czech Lucie Safarova, a semi-finalist last year, suffered a second round defeat at the hands of unheralded compatriot Klara Zakopalova, 6-4, 6-4.

In the ATP section of the event, world number 112 Malek Jaziri of Tunisia upset third seed Viktor Troicki, the 2010 champion and last year’s runner-up, winning 6-1, 3-6, 6-2 to advance into the quarter-finals.

Tatsuma Ito of Japan, seeded eighth, also clinched a quarter-final spot, beating local qualifier Konstantin Kravchuk 7-6 (9/7), 2-6, 6-3.