Former world No.1 Ivanovic upset at China Open

Serb Ana Ivanovic's 4th consecutive run to the quarterfinals at the China Open was snipped here on Wednesday as the former world No.1 lost to Romina Oprandi of Switzerland in the third round.

The current world No.12 joined seed casualty after Czech Republic's world No.5 Petra Kvitova, sixth seed Sara Errani of Italy and eighth seed Samantha Stosur from Australia were all ousted in earlier rounds.

On a sunny but windy afternoon, Ivanovic never felt comfortable throughout the match and succumbed to a 6-4, 6-3 defeat in just 70 minutes.

"I really struggled to find my rhythm out there, especially on the forehand. The ball was coming with not so much pace, and I wasn't really efficient moving forward and taking advantage of that," said a disappointed Ivanovic.

Ivanovic hit 23 winners to just 8 from Oprandi, but the former French Open champion made 17 unforced errors compared to Oprandi's 2. It seemed Oprandi just tried to extend rallies and waited for the Serb to make a mistake.

"She's a tricky opponent. She has really good game, very talented girl. I think the unforced errors made a big difference," the 24-year-old Ivanovic added.

They played a solid game at the beginning and both held serve in the first six games of the opening set. The Swiss broke first in the seventh game, but Ivanovic broke back immediately. Oprandi notched up the second break in the ninth game and then served for the set.

Oprandi broke an out-of-sorts Ivanovic twice for a 5-1 lead in the second set and after that it's just Oprandi's routine to finish her job.

Oprandi's reward will be a last eight encounter against either world No.1 Victoria Azarenka or Russian Lelna Vesnina. As for Ivanovic, there're still matches to be played towards the end of the season.

"I'm going to play next week Linz and then Moscow and then obviously the Fed Cup final, which is a huge thing. It's definitely something I look forward to and I want to perform best for."