Hmm, Hev hasn't actually lost yet, just got back on serve in the second.

Although she was immediately broken to love. 4-6 4-5*

6-6 with ten breaks of serve. I think Heather is carrying an injury.

More of the same in the tie-break. Heather leads 4-2 with only one point won on serve.

Heather had no power in her shots and her serving was poor. Han wasn't much better.

I thought she might steal the second set in the breaker there but she had nothing. Sad as Han was poor.

I dont think playing here was such a bad move, it will help Hev settle into the courts and the time zone. Personally when I travel it takes me a good 4-5 days to get settled completely but having to get on and do something straight away really helps.

It is a shame the way things have gone for her. Who knows if it would have been different had she went there a week in advance, you'd like to think so, but then again she has lost to other similarly lower ranked players in the past 4 months, including Han's 29 year old compatriot Lu (191) in HK last October.

The only half positive thing (if you can call it that) is that she this time last year she was in the middle of an 8 match WTA/ITF losing streak, so has no wins at all to defend until 21st May and the Bondarenko win at the Nuremburg Open, but that just kind of backs up Mervatron's point that she's been off for a long time, with just a couple of runs (which now unfortunately look random) here and there, like Vancouver and Quebec to preserve her ranking and stop it from slipping to new lows.