Bacsinszky out, Kuznetsova, Vinci advance at Wuhan Open

Timea Bacsinszky suffered first round exit at Wuhan Open on Sunday as the No. 12 seed retired trailing America's Louisa Chrico 6-3, 4-3.

The Swiss became the highest ranked player in the first match day to bow out of the tournament.

Olympic gold medalist Monica Puig continued her flops, losing to Italy's 13rd-seeded Roberta Vinci 6-3, 6-3 following her letdown at the US Open when she had been knocked off in the first round by China's Zheng Saisai, who was ousted by Kazakhstan's Yaroslava Shvedova 6-0, 6-3 here.

The Puerto Rican talked her success at Rio Olympics and her mentality since then. "It's been pretty tough. There's been a lot of media attention, a lot of focus on just the Olympics. It's kind of hard when you have to focus on other things, other tournaments, and everybody keeps bringing you back to Rio," said Puig.

"Realistically I'm still ranked in the 30s, I mean, I coming up against Vinci, I was not the favorite on paper. There's no sort of pressure. I'm just going to try to continue to play the way I've been playing. It's just about continuing to stay positive and try to continue to do my best every single time I go out onto the court," added the 22-year-old.

Puig took out Petra Kvitova for the second consecutive time to reach the Toray Pan Pacific Open quarterfinals in Tokyo this week, stretching her win streak against the top 20 to six, before falling to Agnieszka Radwanska.

"It's a bit tough when you come off the biggest win of your career, the biggest tournament you've ever won, and all of a sudden you have to get back to training. I feel like Rio definitely drained me mentally and physically because it was a lot to take in. I've done a great job this year. I did a great job this week in Tokyo as well. I'm not going to look at this defeat as a mistake and dwell on it too much."

After a long season that has seen 19-year-old Belinda Bencic battle injuries to her back and wrist, the Swiss found it's hard to shake off that trouble as she had to retire half way trailing Svetlana Kuznetsova, seeded nine, 6-3, 3-4.

Bencic's effort to bounce back backfired in Toray Pan Pacific Open when she was eliminated by Caroline Wozniacki, who finally won her first title this year there, in three sets in her first match.

Kuznetsova, the former US Open champion, has had some very strong results this year, particularly on hard courts where she has won seven of her last eight against players ranked outside the top 20.

In other matches, Lucie Safarova of Czech Republic beat Varvara Lepchenko from United States 7-5, 6-3; Ekaterina Makarova of Russia breezed off Sabine Lisicki of Germany 6-1, 6-2; Belgium's Yanina Wickmayer outlasted America's Shelby Rogers 6-3, 7-6 (1); Katerina Siniakova from Czech Republic defeated Timea Babos of Hungary, 6-3, 7-5; Laura Siegemund of Germany rallied past Danka Kovinic of Montenegro, 6-7 (7), 7-5, 6-4; It also took three sets for Irina-Camelia Begu of Romania to overtake Elizaveta Kulichkova of Russia in 4-6, 7-6 (4), 6-2. Endit