Serbian tennis ace Ana Ivanovic has upstaged her Russian counterpart Maria Sharapova in the eighth seed's first loss of the spring clay season on Thursday to reach the quarter-finals of the ATP-WTA Rome Masters.
Ivanovic, who was the 2008 Roland Garros winner, beat Sharapova 6-1, 6-4 and has now won just two of ten previous meetings with the four-time Grand Slam champion, the last of which was in a French Open semi-final seven years ago.
According to Sport24, Ivanovic will next play Spaniard Carla Suarez Navarro, who advanced to the quarter-finals after her opponent, Romania's Simona Halep withdrew with an abdominal injury.
Sharapova had won back-to-back titles in Stuttgart and Madrid, compiling a dozen straight victories, the report added.