General / Editor / 04 May 2007 /

Betfair punters see Justine Henin as the strong favourite to win the J&S Cup, following Kim Clijsters' shock first-round defeat in Warsaw

Defending champion Clijsters crashed out of the tournament following a 7-6 (7-3) 6-3 defeat to Julia Vakulenko.

The second seed, who is due to retire at the end of this season, was aiming to put on a good show on her return to the scene of last year's success, but she could not cope with the big serving Ukrainian.

Clijsters said: "The big difference was the serve. She hit a lot of aces and good second serves and she kept me on my back foot a little bit.

"She hit really aggressively and kept me defending all the time.

"A couple of times I tried to step into the return a little bit and be more aggressive, but I felt she was stepping in even more and she went for her shots a lot.

"She was really going for it and hitting a lot of lines and she just played a really good match."

There were no such problems for world number one Henin, who enjoyed an easy 6-1 6-2 win over unseeded German Anna-Lena Groenefeld, in her first clay-court match of 2007.

Henin is now on offer at 1.78 to win the event, with the 24-year-old due to face Italy's Mara Santangelo in the quarter-finals. The Belgian is the 1.07 favourite to reach the last four, while Santangelo can be backed at 13.5.

Fourth seed Jelena Jankovic and American ace Venus Williams have also reached the quarter-finals in Poland.

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