Top seed and world number one Jelena Jankovic had her 12-match winning streak ended when she was defeated 5-7, 6-3, 6-3 by Italy's Flavia Pennetta in the second round of the Zurich Open on Thursday.

The Serb, who has recently added the Beijing, Stuttgart and Moscow titles to the one she claimed earlier this year in Rome, looked weary against an aggressive and persistent opponent.

Pennetta's deep groundstrokes and constant pressure paid dividends to produce her first win over Jankovic in six meetings.

Her win comes just a week after Jankovic won their Moscow quarterfinal in straight sets.

"I was mentally and physically tired today, especially physically," said Jankovic.

"I'm not a machine. I've played a lot of matches, a lot of time changes, different finals, and I'm human.

"Today I couldn't really play my game. I didn't feel that great and Flavia took advantage of that. She played quite solid, so she was the better one today.

"I went on court and didn't know how my body would feel and went out there hoping for the best, but especially at the end today I didn't have any gas left in the tank."

The high-quality match, which lasted two hours 28 minutes, remained finely balanced throughout, with Pennetta looking increasingly sharper and fresher but Jankovic showing her usual resilience under pressure.

Jankovic earned the first break of the match to lead 3-1, but after unusually taking a toilet break in the middle of the seventh game Pennetta broke back and then leveled at 4-4.

Her effort proved to be in vain however when, with Jankovic leading 6-5, the Italian double-faulted on break point to concede the set.

That disappointment only spurred Pennetta to greater efforts, as she broke twice in the second set to lead 4-1.

Jankovic recovered one break in the sixth game, but Pennetta went on to break a third time to level the match at one set all. Both players held break points in the final set, before Pennetta made the vital breakthrough when leading 4-3.

A winning backhand return down the line off a second serve gave her a break for 5-3, and she closed out the match in the next game in dramatic fashion, as her ace was called out but then over-ruled by the umpire as good.

"Today was a big fight from the beginning but I think my serve was working very good," said Pennetta.

"I was very tired but I just kept going with my serve. That was the important thing for me. And I tried to put pressure on her with my returns.

"When you play against such a good player you have to do your best and take some risk. Sometimes you have luck, sometimes you don't.

"Last week and this week the matches were very similar, and the difference was just one or two balls.

"Last week I didn't have some luck but today I was more aggressive and just tried to make something different."

Serb second seed Ana Ivanovic, who had managed to win just five matches since lifting the French Open trophy in June, defeated Marion Bartoli of France 6-2, 6-4.

Recovered from a thumb injury which kept her out of the Beijing Olympics, Ivanovic rallied powerfully and easily overcame any brief threats from her struggling opponent.

Agnieszka Radwanska's hopes of qualifying for next month's Sony Ericsson Championships in Doha were dealt a blow when the Polish fifth seed was beaten 2-6, 7-6 (8/6), 6-3 by Slovenia's Katarina Srebotnik.

Radwanska led the second set 5-2 and came within two points of victory at 6-5 before the 2006 semi-finalist turned the match around.

Fourth seeded Russian Vera Zvonareva was forced to retire because of illness when she was down 6-3, 3-0 against Spain's Anabel Medina Garrigues.

In other second round matches, Victoria Azarenka of Belarus crushed Romanian qualifier Monica Niculescu 6-0, 6-0, and Czech qualifier Petra Kvitova followed her first round upset of Switzerland's Patty Schnyder by beating Sofia Arvidsson of Sweden 6-2, 6-1.

AFP

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