“pearl crown” dress can’t save the china open queen

The Shuai-caused upsets continue at the China Open, with Shuai Zhang‘s defeat of Dinara Safina preceding the fizzling of Jelena Jankovic‘s tourney run. The defending champion lost 6-4, 5-7, 2-6 to local Shuai Peng. Jankovic was still being bothered by the wrist injury that forced her to retire from the Toray Pan Pacific Open final last week; she “couldn’t hit the ball hard enough” to keep the match competitive in the third set.

ANTA, Jelena’s sponsor, created a special dress just for their hometown event (Zheng Jie got the same treatment). They created a “pearl crown” pattern on the layered purple dress, which made references to Jelena’s title reign for this past year.

“I love this design very much,” Jelena said about the design. “I am very touched.” Not touched enough to defend! (Jay kay! xo – tsf)

We really do love this dress, and think that Jelena and ANTA have created a great collaboration that we expect to see more of in the coming weeks — if Jelena is fit enough to play. What do you think of the dress? Tell us!

Bracketology: Meanwhile, Serena won her third-round match and will be back at the No. 1 spot once the rankings are published on Monday. We expect Ms. Williams to survive her half of the draw (taking out Russians Petrova, Sharapova, and Kuznetsova along the way) and then face Dementieva in the finals. See the draw here (pdf).

(images via Getty)

Tags: china open