Dubai: Dubai has entered the WTA record books for becoming only the fourth tournament to have a ‘seedless’ tournament at the quarter-final stage onwards.
All eight seeds crumbled and failed to make the quarter-finals on the third day of the Dubai Duty Free Women’s Open at a rain-marred event where matches went on into the early hours of Thursday morning.
On a bizarre day of upsets, top seed and defending champion Simona Halep - one of the three wild cards - went down in straight sets 6-7 (2), 2-6 against former world number one Ana Ivanovic, while second seed and last year’s semi-finalist Garbine Muruguza of Spain fell to Ukrainian Elina Svitolina 7-6, 6-3.
Third seed Carla Suarez Navarro wilted to French youngster Caroline Garcia 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 and fourth seed Petra Kvitova won the first set in a a mere 18 minutes before melting 6-0, 6-7, 3-6 against unheralded American Madison Brengle.
The remaining four seeds fell on the second day of the competition on Tuesday, with last Sunday’s champion at the St Petersburg Ladies Trophy and seventh seed Roberta Vinci - and fellow finalist and fifth seed Belinda Bencic - among the biggest casualties.
This is only the fourth time since 1983 that a tournament has lost all eight seeds in the group stages. The first one was in Bastad in 2004 followed by Hobart in 2009 and then Bogota in 2012.
