Tokyo: Venus Williams has been experiencing bad results of late and it got worse at the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo.
The second seeded America was beaten by unseeded Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the second round of the tournament on Monday.
Venus lost the match in straight sets 7-6, 7-5. Venus got off to a good start in the match but once the Russian fought back, the multiple Grand Slam winner was unable to stay in the contest.
The American had taken a 3-0 lead in the first set but the 18-year-old Russian came back strongly in the match. She broke her much higher ranked opponent to tie the set at 5-all before holding serve and winning the tiebreak.
Pavlyuchenkova took 6-5 lead in the second set and won when Venus' return was long.
French open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova, too, lost her match. The fifth seed was defeated in three sets by Andrea Petkovic of Germany. Petkovic upset her fifth-seeded opponent 7-5, 4-6, 6-3.
However, Maria Sharapova had a better result winning in three sets against Francesca Schiavone to go through to the third round.
Ai Sugiyama was forced to retire while trailing 6-0, 2-1 to Nadia Petrova.
India's Sania Mirza was also knocked out in the first round. Playing Jie Zheng, Sania managed to win the first set 7-5 but her Chinese opponent did not let go and went on to win the match 5-7, 6-2, 6-3.
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