Francesca Schiavone has been defeated by Lucie Safarova of Czech Republic in the opening round of the Apia International Tennis Tournament which is going on in Sydney, Australia. Safarova won the match in the straight sets by 6-4, 6-4.

It was an unexpected result. Schiavone has got a lot more experience than Safarova and she was the favourite in this match. She was supposed to get better of the Czech player comfortably and reach the second round of the tournament, but, that wasn’t the case to be. She couldn’t play as well as she is capable to and ended up being demolished by her younger opponent.

The New Year isn’t going that well for Schiavone. She has taken part in two tournaments this year and has got knocked out of both of them pretty early.

In the match against Safarova, Schiavone was struggling for rhythm right from the start. She dropped her serve in the very first game of the opening set. However, she managed to recover from that blow quite well by breaking her opponent back in the second game, but, she couldn’t carry on that momentum in the next game and got broken for the second time consecutively. Safarova didn’t lose her lead after that and won her remaining service games to clinch the set by 6-4.

Schiavone was back fighting in the second set. She drew the first blood in the 4^th game to get ahead by 3-1. It seemed that she would be able to drag the match into the third set, but, that didn’t happen. She dropped her serve a couple of times on the trot after that and ended up on the losing side.

In the second round, Safarova will be taking on the Danish player Caroline Wozniacki.