• French Open, Day Nine

Defending champ Li out, Sharapova stutters through

Li Na was beaten in three sets © Getty Images

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World No. 142 Yaroslava Shvedova caused the shock of the French Open so far, sending defending champion Li Na out of the tournament.

Shvedova, who went through qualifying to snatch a spot in the main draw at Roland Garros, earned a 3-6 6-2 6-0 triumph against the seventh seed.

Shvedova had already showed she was a real threat at the tournament, reaching the fourth round without dropping a set, but nonetheless she was not expected to dispose of the holder.

She will now meet fourth seed Petra Kvitova, after the current Wimbledon champion swept aside Varvara Lepchenko 6-2 6-1 in an hour.

The Kazakh player's aggressive, all-or-nothing style bamboozled Na, who failed to build any momentum despite taking the opening set without too much trouble. She was frequently the architect of her own demise, gifting Shvedova points with 41 unforced errors.

Maria Sharapova's claim to the title of 'champion in waiting' was thrown into doubt as she laboured to victory over Klara Zakopalova.

Sharapova's serve looked extremely vulnerable in a match that saw the players trade 21 breaks in blustery conditions. The Russian, who is projected to return to the world No. 1 position if she reaches the final, battled through to triumph 6-4 6-7 6-2 in Paris.

Sharapova will next face Kaia Kanepi, the No. 23 seed, who issued Arantxa Rus with a bagel in their deciding set.

Neither player looked at all convincing on serve during the opening stanza: there were seven breaks, with Sharapova managing one more than her unseeded opponent. The distracting winds seemed to convince both to take a little pace off their deliveries, and a series of invitingly hittable balls resulted.

Serves were just as fragile in the second set, but the groundstroke battle was much more evenly-contested, with the diminutive Zakopalova generating a surprising amount of power from the baseline. Her reward was a tiebreak at the end of the second, during which an agitated Sharapova argued with the umpire over a line call. After that, she was unable to recover her composure, and Zakopalova took her third set point.

Although Sharapova seemed to be battling a wrist injury during the third frame, she finally seized control of the match, confirming a quarter-final berth.

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