Na Beats Sharapova at WTA Championships at BetLM

Na Beats Sharapova at WTA Championships

Updated Oct 26, 2011 9:21 PM ET

ISTANBUL

Maria Shara­pova pulled out of the WTA Cham­pi­onships with a sore ankle Wednes­day after los­ing her sec­ond straight match at the season-ending tournament.

The second-ranked Russian’s with­drawal ensures that Car­o­line Woz­ni­acki will fin­ish the year with the No. 1 rank­ing, despite los­ing her group-stage match against Russia’s Vera Zvonareva.

Shara­pova entered the tour­na­ment after sit­ting out since with­draw­ing in the quar­ter­fi­nals in Tokyo last month because of an ankle injury.

After los­ing 7–6 (4), 6–4 to Li Na in her sec­ond round-robin match Wednes­day, Shara­pova said “the ankle didn’t recover as well as I had hoped after the first round.”

Shara­pova lost to Sam Sto­sur in her open­ing match on Tuesday.

“The swelling got a lit­tle worse,” the second-ranked Russ­ian said. “It just lim­its my move­ment a lot, and it’s not some­thing I really want to risk, espe­cially at the end of the sea­son, know­ing that I have some time to recover and let it heal nat­u­rally instead of really push­ing it and dam­ag­ing some­thing else.”

The Russ­ian will be replaced by alter­nate Mar­ion Bar­toli of France, who will face Vic­to­ria Azarenka of Belarus in the final group round. Azarenka main­tained her per­fect record against Sam Sto­sur with a 6–2, 6–2 win ear­lier Wednesday.

Woz­ni­acki fell to 1–1 in the round-robin phase after los­ing 6–2, 4–6, 6–3 against Zvonareva in the late match. Even with the loss, she will fin­ish at No. 1 in the rank­ings for the sec­ond year in a row, despite never hav­ing won a major. Shara­pova was the only player with a chance to over­take the Dane going into the tournament.

“It’s amaz­ing for me to fin­ish the year as No. 1 once more,” Woz­ni­acki said. “I mean, only very few play­ers have fin­ished a year as No. 1, and to do it two years in a row is very spe­cial. I’m only in the begin­ning of my career, and to have achieved so much already, it’s a dream come true.”

Shara­pova led 4–2 in the first set before Li broke back to force the tiebreaker, where the Russ­ian let a 4–0 lead slip away. Li then took a 5–2 lead in the sec­ond and served out the match on her sec­ond attempt.

Shara­pova said she expects to return to the court in Bris­bane next year ahead of the Aus­tralian Open.

“Obvi­ously dis­ap­point­ing to end it this way,” the Russ­ian said about her sea­son. “But I have no regrets. … I def­i­nitely pro­gressed from last year and I’ve improved, and my game has stepped up. I still feel like going into next year there’s so many things that I can improve that can make me bet­ter. It’s just some­thing I look for­ward to when I start train­ing again.”

Li, the French Open cham­pion, is the first Chi­nese player to qual­ify for the season-ending event for the world’s top eight players.

Sto­sur, the U.S. Open cham­pion, was com­ing off her first ever win over Shara­pova on Tues­day but appeared flat as she came out for Wednesday’s open­ing match. In her first match in the White Group, the fourth-seeded Azarenka broke four times to take her head-to-head record against Sto­sur to 5–0.

“I didn’t play aggres­sive enough … I don’t feel like I did any­thing,” Sto­sur said. “I just kind of got pushed around the court, and even­tu­ally was made to make an error or she would hit a winner.”

The Aus­tralian said her per­for­mance wasn’t affected by the late match against Shara­pova the pre­vi­ous evening.

“Oh, I can’t blame that,” she said. “Yeah, it was a quick turn­around, but I felt like I was ready to go.”

Our sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by X2 news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more news see: Na beats Shara­pova at WTA Cham­pi­onships.

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