Serbian second seed Bojana Jovanovski suffered a surprise defeat to unseeded 17-year-old Yulia Putintseva in three sets, 6-0, 4-6, 6-2, in the second round of the 15th Al Habtoor Tennis Challenge yesterday (Wednesday).

Despite the gap of nearly 100 world ranking spots between the two players, the young Kazakh prospect put in two dominant sets to dismiss Jovanovski.

The 20-year-old Serb hasn’t been in top form recently, struggling to overcome Conny Perrin in the first round before her resounding defeat to Putintseva.

Jovanovski came into the tournament after a 15-day holiday which she believed contributed to her “really bad” play on Tuesday, before failing to beat Kazakh starlet Putintseva.

Ukrainian Elina Svitolina, 18, will take on Putintseva in the quarter-finals. Svitolina, the sixth seed, reached the quarter-finals after a strong straight sets 7-6(5) 6-4 win over Luksika Kumkhum. Japanese legend Kimiko Date-Krum took her place in the quarter-finals after beating Oksana Kalashnikova in straight sets.

Date-Krum – who was world No4 when fellow quarter-finalist Putintseva was born – will take on Karolina Pliskova after winning her second round match 6-1 6-2.

Date-Krumm had no trouble dispatching 22-year-old Kalashnikova, despite being nearly double her age at 42. Date-Krumm’s quarter-final opponent, Pliskova, had to come from behind to defeat 31-year-old German Kristina Barrois 4-6 6-2 6-2.

The defeat caps off a pretty miserable year for Barrois, who has slipped nearly 220 places in the world rankings from 57, in May of last year, to 272.

Another surprise on day three of the 15th Habtoor Tennis Challenge was the defeat of top seed Irina-Camelia Begu, who lost to Yi-Miao Zhou, 6-2, 6-1.

The world No52 had no answer to Zhou’s disciplined display, who sits 150 spots behind the Romanian in the world rankings.

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