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No. 1 Safina sees difficult 2009 end on low note
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Back problems halted Dinara Safina/AP photo Kirsty Wigglesworth
Dinara Safina will relinquish her No. 1 ranking and is probably through for the rest of the year after retiring two games into her first round-robin match of the WTA Championship tennis event at Doha, Qatar, on Wednesday.
Safina said she could not continue after experiencing lower-back pain in her match against Jelena Jankovic. She then withdrew from the event and said she will be out of action for at least six weeks, and may miss the first major of 2010, the Australian Open in January.
Safina had regained the No. 1 ranking from Serena Williams this week, but will give it back now and Williams presumably will be No. 1 at year's end.
It ends a trying summer for Safina, who has lost matches to players with triple-digit rankings. Safina has not beaten a top-10 player since May, when she defeated Victoria Azarenka, who was then ranked No. 9.
Safina has really struggled since August. She lost her first match in Toronto to a player ranked No. 32 back in late August and followed that with a third-round loss in the U.S. Open to No. 72 Petra Ktitova.
Safina then lost her first match in her next tournament in Tokyo to a player ranked 132nd, and lost her second match in her next competition to Shuai Zhang, who was ranked 226.
That was her last match until Wednesday's withdrawal after playing just two games.
In the featured round-robin match of the day, Serena Williams saved a match point and beat sister Venus Williams 5-7, 6-4, 7-6(4).
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