Yayuk seeded third at Indonesia Open
JAKARTA (JP): The country's number one player and defending champion Yayuk Basuki is seeded third at the Indonesia Open women's tennis championships starting here on Monday.
The seeding list issued yesterday by the Indonesian Tennis Association (Pelti), organizer of the US$100,000 annual event, put world number 34 Wang Shi-ting of Chinese Taipei atop the 32- player rankings. Florencia Labat of Argentina, who is ranked 36 in the world, was placed second.
Yayuk, 23, dropped her Women's Tennis Association (WTA) ranking to 48 after her disappointing performance in Asian and American outings in the last two months. She capped her four-year career by entering the world's best 30 last February after triumphing at the Nokia Open in China.
The grass-court specialist, however, has failed to maintain her form since then. She last fell in the first hurdle at the hands of Nicole Arendt of the United States at the Volvo Open women's tennis tournament in Pattaya last week. Yayuk won the 1991 and 1993 editions of the WTA-sanctioned championships.
"We really hope to see Yayuk set up a final showdown against Wang next week," said Pelti secretary general Edy Katimansah. Both players avoided a meeting at the Nokia Open as Wang pulled out of the first professional tennis competition held in China in the last minutes.
Yayuk is now eying a hat-trick at her country's most lucrative women's tennis meet sponsored by Bank Danamon. The draw will be announced this weekend, and if everything goes as expected, Yayuk will meet Labat in the semifinals.
The seeding list put another Indonesian, Romana Tedjakusuma, in the seventh place behind American Kristine Radford, Rachell McQuillan of Canada and Sandrine Testud of France. Arendt was ranked eighth. Romana, currently world number 88, will make her first appearance at the tournament's main draw.
The winner of this year's Indonesia Open will qualify for the $750,000 German Open in Berlin in May. The competitions will be staged at the Senayan indoor tennis stadium, which uses the rebound ace surface, the same surface used in the Australian Open.
Top seed Yayuk captured the title and bagged the winner's $18,000 check last year by beating second seed American Ann Grossman in straight sets 6-4, 6-4. (amd)