Top seed and defending champion Dinara Safina has been crushed out of the second round of Toray Pan Pacific Open. The world no. 1 Russian lost to an 18-year-old qualifier, Chang Kai-chen. The Taiwanese defeated Safina 7-6 (7-5), 4-6, 7-5 in the match, putting on some excellent performances. Venus Williams also suffered the same fate as she was also knocked out by a qualifier. Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova took two sets (7-6 (8-6), 7-5) to defeat Venus.
In both the matches, the Safina and Venus got off to a bad start. Safina could recover well in the second set against Chang, but the Russian lost the highly competitive last set. Venus though fought toe-to-toe with Pavlyuchenkova, she eventually lost both the sets.
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