By Erik Gudris | Tuesday, April 8, 2014

 

Another week means another opening round loss for Sloane Stephens who came up short against a former champion this time in Bogota.

Photo Credit: Corleve

Sloane Stephens again found herself exiting a tournament earlier than expected after suffering yet another opening round loss this time in Bogota.

Also See: Twitter Critics Not Impressed by Sloane Stephens Loss to Wozniacki

Seeded No.2 this week at the Claro Colsanitas in Bogota, Colombia, Stephens faced off against Bogota born No. 129 ranked Mariana Duque-Marino.

A former champion of the event in 2010, Duque-Marino looked at home as she matched Stephens early on. Winning nine out of the last 12 games, Duque-Marino completed the 6-3, 6-3 win.

Duque-Marino is now 12-6 lifetime at her home event.

Despite reaching the fourth round in Melbourne and the quarterfinals at Indian Wells, Stephens has endured criticism for her recent defeats and remarks made after them. Bogota now marks two straight opening round losses for Stephens who also lost in the second round at Charleston last week to Elina Svitolina.

Despite that earlier defeat, Stephens took a long-term view of her career.

"Like I said, like I'm 21 now. If I play 10 more years of tennis, until I'm 31, that's a lot of tennis to be played. I could like…I could win the next Grand Slam or I could win one in six years and that would still be, you know, if I had pretty decent results and I was pretty consistent, I think that would still be pretty good," Stephens said. "But like I said, there's a lot of tennis to be played and I'm not...like I'm in the Top 20 and I'm still really young and still learning a lot about myself and things like that, so I'm not rushing to try and do anything fabulous..

Defending Bogota champion Jelena Jankovic will compete in the singles draw later in the week.