Niculescu upsets Li in Beijing

BEIJING, Oct. 2 (UPI) -- Monica Niculescu ousted fourth-seeded and local favorite Li Na in straight sets Sunday at the China Open tennis tournament in Beijing.

Niculescu, a qualifier, took the match 6-4, 6-0, piling up six service breaks in eight receiving games. She ended up winning nearly two-thirds of the points in the match.

Li is 6-7 since winning the 2011 French Open. She also went out in the first round of the U.S. Open, her most recent tournament before Beijing, where she was a semifinalist a year ago.

Chinese players were swept Sunday. In addition to Li's defeat, Kaia Kanepi beat Zheng Saisai 6-0, 6-3; Dominika Cibulkova topped Shuai Zhang 6-0, 6-2; and Chanelle Scheepers ousted Hu Yue-Yue 6-0, 5-7, 6-0.

No. 6-seeded Samantha Stosur dropped serve once in a 6-4, 6-0 win over Tsvetana Pironkova. Stosur, who is 15-3 in her last four tournaments, which includes the U.S. Open title, lost seven points in the second-set shutout.

In Sunday's other matches involving seeded players, eighth-seeded Marion Bartoli needed to rally for a 3-6, 6-4, 7-5 win over Iveta Benesova while No. 13-seeded Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova defeated Barbora Zahlavova Strycova 7-5, 6-4 and No. 14 Sabine Lisicki advanced when Irina-Camelia Begu retired after losing the first set 2-6.

Also winning first-round matches Sunday were Daniela Hantuchova, Ana Ivanovic, Christina McHale, Carla Suarez Navarro, Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez and Polona Hercog.