Marat Safin and his sister Dinara Safina both made emotional departures from the China Open this week but for very different reasons.

Safin, 29, has decided to hang up his racket at the end end of the season after 12 years as a professional and organisers of the Beijing event held a special farewell ceremony for him after his entertaining defeat to Rafa Nadal in the quarter-finals.

Nadal had found himself in the unusual position of having fans cheering for his opponent as the Russian former world number one continued to reap the dividends of being the first China Open champion back in 2004.

Safin was clearly moved by the post-match ceremony, which included a video message from Safina, and if he said thank you to the Beijing fans once, he said it a thousand times. 

Safina, by contrast, left the centre court in tears on Monday after suffering the ignomony of the worst upset for a number one in the history of the rankings at the hands of 226th-ranked Chinese wild card Zhang Shuai.

The defeat, which followed early upsets at the U.S. Open and Pan Pacific Open in preceding tournaments, means Serena Williams will end the Russian’s controversial 25-week reign as number one on Monday.

Marat, a former world number one and Australian Open champion, was asked to offer some advice to his sister and, although sympathetic, his reply reflected the hard-nosed attitude of a man coming to the end of 12 years of professional tennis.    

 ”It’s a tough sport. It’s not a team sport; you can’t blame others on the team,” he said. “It’s just you and how you can manage yourself along on tour and she is getting stronger and managed to get into first spot. It is already a big deal because no one expected her to be anywhere close, even in the top ten.

“She playing great at the moment, but she has ups and downs and hopefully she can recover from that and she will. Sometimes you have to deal with the difficulties and I think she has. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

“So, if she is positive in this small crisis, she will be a great player.”

Photos by REUTERS/David Gray