Dinara Safina Eliminated From Rogers Cup

It was a tough day for Dinara Safina in Toronto.  Her serve betrayed her from the very start and she just could not seem to pull herself together.  Unfortunately, it cost her the chance of winning the Rogers Cup title.

Safina was eliminated by Aravane Rezai after committing 17 double faults.  She lost with a final score of 3-6, 6-2, 6-4.  The Rogers Cup has been interesting for the top-seeded players this year since Venus Williams was eliminated yesterday by Kateryna Bondarenko but, also, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were both knocked out when they played in Montreal last week (okay, Nadal was a little more predictable considering his knee injury).

The 23-year-old Russian phenom was so angry that she was reduced to tears as she spoke after the match.  “It’s my brain,” she said Safina. “I know exactly what I have to do, but if I’m not using my brain, I’m not doing the things my coach is telling me . . . (I’m) too disappointed with myself.”

Yeah, she was disappointed enough to go down the list of her faults adding “Ball toss disaster. I don’t move my legs, I’m jumping backwards instead of jumping forwards, I’m kicking it too much instead of hitting it more, I drop my head, I don’t hold the left arm.  It’s so much. I know this all, and I’m still so stupid that I’m continuing to do it.”

She was so upset about losing a match for the first time since February that she slammed her racket on the ground and then could barely even acknowledge Rezai when they met at the net after the match.  The 22-year-old from France was sympathetic and understanding and said “I’m very sorry for her because I don’t like a player who’s not confident.  I prefer to beat a player in good shape. I’m a player that feels when I lose, it’s the worst moment in my life.”

Safina plans to rest for a few days before getting ready for the U.S. Open, which begins on August 31, 2009.

Things were much better for Maria Sharapova, however, who has advanced to the third round after eliminating Sybille Bammer.  Even though it wasn’t a great performance, the win is helping to bolster the confidence of Sharapova, who has been steadily improving since taking some more time off to recover from her shoulder injury.  “I’m actually having a competition with myself to see how many errors and double-faults I can make and still win the match in two sets,” Sharapova joked. “The fact that I served that way and still won the match in two sets is certainly going to give me a lot of confidence when my arm is where it needs to be and when my serve gets to where it has to be.”

The following seeded players also advanced to the third round:

• No. 4 Elena Dementieva
• No. 5 Jelena Jankovic
• No. 7 Vera Zvonareva, who downed Italy’s Roberta Vinci 6-3, 6-3