February 12, 2003	Wednesday	Zul Hijjah 10, 1423

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DOHA, Feb 11: Thai ace Tamarine Tanasugarn’s dreams of adding to her Indian Open title from last week were dashed on Tuesday in the WTA Qatar Open by unheralded wild card Maria Vento-Kabchi of Venezuela.

Other early first round winners in the 170,000-dollar tournament were big-hitting Uzbek Iroda Tulyaganova and Indonesian Angelique Widjaja.

Tanasugarn, the fourth seed and last year’s runner-up here, lost in straight sets 6-2, 6-2 in a little more than an hour.

Coming off a high from her winning run in India, the 26-year-old Tanasugarn’s usually disciplined game was riddled with unforced errors and contributed to her downfall.

She dropped her serve in the very first game but broke back in the fourth. However, Vento-Kabchi, detecting a weakness in her rival’s defences, employed clever slices to draw Tanasugarn forward, and again broke her twice to go one up.

The Venezuelan let rip in the second set and before Tanasugarn, world No 28, could find her bearings was 4-0 up, and kept her serve to advance further into the tournament.

Results (x denotes seed):

First round: Maria-Vento Kabchi (Ven) bt Tamarine Tanasugarn (Tha x4) 6-2, 6-2; Iroda Tulyaganova (Uzb) bt Antonella Serra Zanetti (Ita) 6-3, 7-6 (7/3); Angelique Widjaja (Ina) bt Silvija Talaja (Cro) 7-6 (7/4), 6-4.—AFP