Chinese tennis players have been stopped at as early as the first round of the Dubai Tennis Championships WTA tournament on Monday.

Both Li Na and Zheng Jie made big pressure on their higher-rated opponents, but failed to turn the efforts into victories.

Zheng was beaten by Russian sixth seed Anastasia Myskina 6-3, 6-7, 6-1 with some controversial calls, and Li Na lost to eighth seed Daniela Hantuchova of Slovakia in a long haul of two hours 15 minutes.

The highest-ranked Chinese Zheng questioned almost every close call that went against her, taking the first set in ease, but two controversial incidents helped Myskina to get back into the second set.

When Zheng was serving for the second set at 5-4, a line judge called a Myskina drive in, and Zheng and the majority of the crowd appeared to think it was out.

Again at a sequel on the first point of the tie-breaker, Zheng failed to address the ball properly and ballooned it wide, thinking Myskina's shot was out.

With the victory, Myskina, the 2004 French Open champion continued her bid to rehabilitate herself as a major title contender at the one million US dollars dollars event, and may next take the resurgent Martina Hingis, who faces the Indian super-hero Sania Mirza on Tuesday.

In other plays Monday, Czech Lucie Safarova ruled out Japanese veteran Sugiyama Ai 6-2, 6-3, Vera Dushevina of Russian eased past French Marion Bartoli 6-3, 6-1, and her compatriot Elena Likhovtseva beat Jelena Jankovic of Serbia and Montenegro 7-5, 7-5.

Fourth seed Justine Henin-Hardenne, France's Mauresmo, Maria Sharapova of Russia and American Lindsay Davenport have been given byes into the second round of the Dubai tournament.

(Xinhua News Agency February 21, 2006)