A scary sight: Safina wriggles out of ugly match at US Open

Top-ranked Safina puts a scare into US Open

NEW YORK — Dinara Safina overcame a long, mistake-filled display of tennis Tuesday to barely avoid becoming the first top-seeded woman to lose in the first round of the U.S. Open.

She defeated 167th-ranked Olivia Rogowska of Australia 6-7 (5), 6-2, 6-4 in a match that included 113 unforced errors, 24 double-faults and 15 service breaks over 2 hours, 35 minutes.

“I didn’t break any rackets and didn’t get any warnings,” Safina said, when asked if there were any silver linings. “That’s already positive.”

She overcame a 3-0 deficit in the third set to avoid becoming the first top-seeded player to be ousted in the first round of any Grand Slam since Martina Hingis lost 6-4, 6-2 to Virginia Ruano Pascual at Wimbledon in 2001.

Safina served out her final game at love, forcing errors on Rogowska’s ground strokes during one of the Russian’s few sustained runs of consistency.

Safina’s coach, Zeljko Krajan, was clearly having trouble watching it — slumping, scowling and shaking his head from his lonely seat in the stands.

Safina moves on, but all the questions about her worthiness as the world’s No. 1 player will almost certainly gather steam.

No. 2 Serena Williams has won the Australian Open and Wimbledon this year. Safina doesn’t yet have a career Grand Slam victory, getting blown out in all three finals she’s been in.

“In the French Open, I won all the matches 6-love, 6-1. Did it help? Not really,” she said. “It happens like this. You pull out the match somehow.”

It was the second big scare over the first two days on the U.S. Open show court. On Monday night, third-seeded Venus Williams overcame a balky knee and some shaky play for a 6-7 (5), 7-5, 6-3 win over Russia’s Vera Dushevina.

That match looked like a Borg-McEnroe classic compared to Safina-Rogowska.

The first set was filled with tentative play and ended when Safina double-faulted for a 7-5 loss in the tiebreaker — the first serve barely making it halfway up the net, the second a good 3 inches out.

They slogged on and Rogowska, an 18-year-old with one win over a top-100 player, had chances to put a stranglehold on the match and put her name in the history books, even after she blew the 3-0 lead in the third.

Serving at 4-all and deuce in the final set, she chipped a slicing backhand deep into the corner and Safina lobbed it back, but Rogowska hit a tentative overhead, then failed to put away a pair of ensuing floaters and eventually got passed.

That set up break point, which Safina promptly lost with a forehand hit long. Finally, Rogowska made two unforced errors in a row to give Safina the game on her fourth break point, fall behind 5-4 and set up the finish.

“I felt like I kept up with her,” Rogowska said. “Like, I didn’t think she blew me off the court. I’m disappointed I lost, and I didn’t expect to say that after playing the No. 1 player in the world. It’s a bit weird.”

Safina, whose brother, Marat Safin won the U.S. Open in 2000, accounted for 48 of the unforced errors and 11 of the double-faults.

“Today, I was just saying, ‘Come on, play point by point,’” Safina said. “I would not give up. I’d still give her a hard time trying to win the match.”

Later in Arthur Ashe Stadium, fourth-seeded faced Novak Djokovic played Ivan Ljubicic, with Maria Sharapova and Andy Murray slated for the night session.

Other winners Tuesday included No. 7 seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and No. 10 Fernando Verdasco on the men’s side and No. 5 Jelena Jankovic, No. 6 Svetlana Kuznetsova, No. 9 Caroline Wozniacki and No. 13 Nadia Petrova for the women.

Seeded players who lost included No. 29 Igor Andreev, who fell to American Jesse Witten, and No. 16 Virginie Razzano, defeated by Yanina Wickmayer.

Safina will play her second round against Kristina Barrois, a relative unknown who now gets her chance to tie history.

The earliest a top-seeded woman has been ousted from the U.S. Open is the second round. That was last year, when Ana Ivanovic fell to Julie Coin of France, who moved up 55 spots in the rankings thanks in part to that victory.