After just over two hours of action at the US Open on Monday, two of the seven top-seeded women were already out.
Seventh-seeded Ana Ivanovic lost her first-round match on Monday, but it was not much of an upset.
She had a tough draw against Dominika Cibulkova, a former top-10 player and Australian Open runner-up whose ranking had fallen to 50th because of an injury.
Cibulkova won 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 in the tournament’s first match at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
She had undergone surgery on her left Achilles in February and missed more than four months.
Ivanovic, the 2008 French Open champ and a former No 1 player, was one of the few women in the field who have defeated Serena Williams in a grand slam match, beating her at the 2014 Australian Open. Cibulkova went on to reach the final at that tournament, losing to Li Na.
Cibulkova was the seeded player being upset in the first round of the past two US Opens, including a loss to 15-year-old American CiCi Bellis a year ago.
The 50th-ranked Cibulkova seized the advantage with a service break in the fourth game of third set for a 3-1 lead and consolidated it with a backhand drop shot to make it 4-1.
A backhand long from Ivanovic, who had her left foot taped midway through the final set, ended the nearly two-hour contest.
“Today I know that my game was there on the court,” said Cibulkova, who cracked the top 10 last year before finishing the season 11th and reached the quarter-finals last week in New Haven.
“I just had to stay tough and know I had to do it, she doesn’t give away shots.”
Cibulkova will next face American qualifier Jessica Pegula, a 7-5, 6-3 winner over Belgian Alison van Uytvanck.
For Ivanovic, the result continued an up-and-down season. The 27-year-old Serb, who reached the semi-finals at Roland Garros this year, was coming off back-to-back quarter-finals at US Open tune-up events in Toronto and Cincinnati. She also has lost three times to players outside the top 100 this year, including twice at grand slams.
Elsewhere, third-seeded Maria Sharapova withdrew from the US Open on Sunday because of a lingering right leg injury.
Other early matches on the women’s side went according to script as 13th-seeded Russian Ekaterina Makarova dismissed Brazil’s Teliana Pereira 6-3 6-3, and 15th seed Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland beat Czech Katerina Siniakova 6-2 6-3.
On the men’s side, No 4 seed Kei Nishikori crashed out in the first round with a 6-4, 3-6, 4-6, 7-6, 6-4 loss to 41st-ranked Benoit Paire of France.
Nishikori, a runner-up last year at Flushing Meadows, lost in the US Open first round for the third time in five years.
Elsewhere, seeds held largely to form. Belgium’s David Goffin, the No 14 seed, beat Simone Bolelli 6-4, 6-1, 6-2, while 17th-seeded Grigor Dimitrov swept Australia’s Matthew Ebden 6-4, 6-2, 6-4.
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