Top seed Sloane Stephens suffers Nuremberg Cup upset

Top seed Sloane Stephens suffered an upset in the Nuremberg Cup following the completion of her first round match with Kazakhstan’s Yulia Putintseva.

American Stephens, ranked 10th in the world, and Putintseva were locked at 3-3 in the deciding set when bad light stopped play on Tuesday, with the latter eventually prevailing 5-7 6-4 7-6 (7/3).

British number two Heather Watson crashed out following a straight-sets defeat to world number 203 Fanny Stollar.

Watson, ranked 117 places higher than the 19-year-old Hungarian qualifier, was beaten 6-3 6-3 in the second round in just over an hour.

Elsewhere, Belgian Kirsten Flipkens overcame Argentinian qualifier Nadia Podoroska 7-6 (8/6) 6-2, and Romanian Sorana Cirstea beat the USA’s Madison Brengle 6-3 3-6 6-3.

Heavy rain brought a premature end to Wednesday’s play, with the remaining second round matches due to resume on Thursday.

At the Internationaux de Strasbourg, top seed Ashleigh Barty cruised into the quarter-finals with a straight-sets victory over France’s Pauline Parmentier.

Australian world number 17 Barty won 6-1 6-4 and will face China’s Wang Qiang in the last eight.

The 2011 US Open champion Samantha Stosur also progressed, knocking out second seed Daria Gavrilova 6-3 6-4, while Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova looked sharp in beating unseeded compatriot Natalia Vikhlyantseva 6-4 6-4.

In Wednesday’s other match, eighth seed Su-Wei Hsieh comfortably beat wildcard Lucie Safarova 6-2 6-3.