Bulgaria's Pironkova Defeated at Stuttgart Tournament

Tsvetana Pironkova, Bulgaria's best female tennis player, suffered a 4:6, 1:6 loss at the hands of French star Marion Bartoli at the first round of the Stuttgart tournament.

The eighth-seeded Bartoli faced little resistance after fighting through the first set. She raced off to a 5-0 lead in the second and wrapped up the first-round victory in 1 hour 22 minutes. Thus, Pironkova could not repeat her feat from 2010, when she surprisingly defeated Bartoli on her way to her first Grand Slam semi-final in Wimbledon.

Pironkova, 23, won just 1 point for the WTA ranking, in which she is currently 35th.