Top Seeds Commit Hari Kari in Tokyo

The top seeds dropped like kamikaze planes in their first matches in Tokyo, with none of the top six seeds winning even one match.  An exodus of historic proportions

(Q) Kai-Chen Chang TPE def. Dinara Safina RUS [1] 7-6(5), 4-6, 7-5 -- Dinara Safina continued to make her case for being the most laughable #1 in the history of tennis with a first round exit to Kai-Chen Chang.  There's a whole lot that's pathetic about this loss for Safina, but perhaps most so is that she actually served for the match at 5-4 in the third set, and couldn't close the deal.  For a top player to lose to a teenager outside the top 100 because her nerves aren't as good is just bafflingly terrible.  Safina keeps finding new rock bottoms, but it's tough to see her finding a way to surpass this one any time soon.

(Q) Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova RUS def. Venus Williams USA [2] 7-6(6), 7-5 -- Pavlyuchenkova is an up and comer, to be sure, but this is a match Venus should have had.  Considering Pavlyuchenkova won all of three games vs. Melanie Oudin at the US Open, this is a bad loss for Venus in what is increasingly looking like the tail end of her time as a threat to win hard court events.

(Q) Kateryna Bondarenko UKR def. Elena Dementieva RUS [3] 6-2, 6-7(3), 6-1 -- With this win, Kateryna moves ahead of sister Alona in the rankings for the first time.  Bondarenko's run to the US Open quarterfinals is looking like less of a fluke now, eh? By the same token, so is Dementieva's second round US Open exit.

Aleksandra Wozniak CAN def. Caroline Wozniacki DEN [4] 5-0 ret. -- Wozniacki has been battling flu symptoms for some time, and she really had no business even stepping out on the court for this match.  Should have given a Lucky Loser (perhaps Melanie Oudin?) her spot.

(Q) Andrea Petkovic GER def. Svetlana Kuznetsova RUS [5] 7-5, 4-6, 6-3 -- Kuznetsova's wild inconsistency makes this loss no surprise, but Petkovic should be no threat to anyone on hard courts.  Bad loss.

Alisa Kleybanova RUS def. Vera Zvonareva RUS [6] 3-6, 6-4, 6-2 -- This is also a pretty excusable loss for Zvonareva, who falls to a pretty tough player in Kleybanova.  It's a shame Kleybanova didn't have her act together in the first round of the US Open, because she easily could have made it out of the top half.