Sharapova at center of upsets at Indian Wells

Draw disruption, as it turned out, wasn’t gender specific at the Pacific Life Open.

It just took longer for chaos to hit the women’s side, taking out the defending champion/No. 1-seeded player, another former champion and a rising star in fourth-round matches Tuesday.

Maria Sharapova? Gone, along with her No. 1-ranking. Fifteenth-seeded Vera Zvonareva beat the defending champion, 4-6, 7-5, 6-1, in 2 hours 13 minutes at Indian Wells Tennis Garden.

The byproduct means Sharapova will lose the top spot on the WTA Tour to Justine Henin when the next rankings are released Monday, and that this event loses its top female drawing card. She was hardly devastated about losing No. 1, saying: “Didn’t mean too much.”

Martina Hingis? Gone, following Sharapova out the exit, losing to No. 14 Daniela Hantuchova in an erratic performance. Hantuchova defeated No. 3 Hingis, 6-4, 6-3, in a rematch of their 2002 final here, which Hantuchova won in straight sets. Hingis, too, was a former champion at Indian Wells, winning in 1998. If that seems like a different era, well, that’s a considerable understatement.

“She’s smart. She knows what I’m doing,” Hingis said of Hantuchova. “She reads my game. I read hers.... Even she tells me in the locker room, ‘With you, I feel like we play tennis.’ ”

Jelena Jankovic? Also gone. The fast-rising Serbian star, who made the top 10 this year, missed a great opportunity in her half of the draw, losing to Li Na in straight sets. Li defeated Jankovic, 6-3, 7-6 (1), and will face Zvonareva in the quarterfinals.

Three other highly seeded players lost: No. 13 Tatiana Golovin beat No. 4 Nadia Petrova, 6-2, 1-0 (retired), who quit because of heat illness; Sybille Bammer beat No. 10 Ana Ivanovic, 6-7 (0), 6-0, 6-3, and No. 11 Shahar Peer defeated No. 8 Anna Chakvetadze, 6-4, 7-6 (2).

Leave it to Hingis to best summarize the odd day of results. “It’s one thing after another,” she said.

Form began unraveling with the Sharapova match. Her considerable rust was in evidence: 47 unforced errors and an often forlorn-looking serve.

Still, Sharapova doesn’t often fold on the verge of victory. She led 5-3 in the second and served for the match at 5-4. Three of her 13 double faults came in the 12th game of the second set. At one point, she lost eight straight games.

“Yeah, there was a lot of wrong things going on today and that was just one of them,” said Sharapova, of her serve. “Especially in the third set. But like I said, it was more of a snowball effect than anything else.” Said Zvonareva: “To beat a player No. 1 in the world, it’s just great for anybody’s career.

*

Larry Scott, chief executive of the women’s tour, met with reporters Tuesday and painted an optimistic picture of his organization’s efforts to revamp the 2009 tour calendar. He said progress has been made in negotiations with the U.S. Tennis Assn., which has held reservations about the changes.

A less rosy view comes from the USTA. It owns the New Haven tournament and is a part owner of Carson, along with AEG. Those two events have not applied for slots on the 2009 calendar and USTA spokesperson Chris Widmaier said that, “Carson and New Haven will apply only when the remaining issues between the USTA and the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour are settled.”

*

lisa.dillman@latimes.com