Jelena Jankovic's hopes of regaining her world number one spot this week ended on Friday when she crashed out of the Pan Pacific Open tennis tournament to Svetlana Kuznetsova in the quarterfinals.

The Serbian top seed, who could have regained the top spot by winning in Tokyo, hit two double faults on a break point before losing 2-6, 7-5, 7-5 to the fifth-seeded Russian.

Jankovic had to crawl back from a break down in each set, and at 5-5 in the second set she hit her sixth double fault on an advantage point for Kuznetsova before the Russian held her own to even the score.

Jankovic came back from a break down three times in the final set, but again hit a double fault at 30-40 in the 11th game to go down 5-6.

Kuznetsova, who avenged her Olympic loss to China's Li Na in the first round, made no mistakes in the following game, hitting a backhand passing shot at 40-30 to finish off the two-hour-26-minute battle.

In the semifinals on Saturday, Kuznetsova will meet either Russian Olympic gold medallist and third seed Elena Dementieva or Katarina Srebotnik of Slovenia.

AFP