qualified for her first WTA event at Guangzhou, but lost in the first round to Arantxa Parra-Santonja of Spain. In October, as a direct entrant to the WTA tournament at Bangkok, she impressed in defeating Aiko Nakamura and Sania Mirza (though the popular Indian starlet retired after losing the first set to Yuan), to win her first ever main-draw matches at a WTA event in reaching the quarter-final, where she took Gisela Dulko to three sets. Two further semifinal performances at $25k contests rounded off the Chinese teenager's best year to date, which saw her ascend another 234 places in the world rankings to 153rd, well within contention for qualifying for more WTA tournaments in the new year. 2006 2006 began well with the much-improved Chinese rising star qualifying for Gold Coast with wins over Cara Black, Kaia Kanepi (again) and Casey Dellacqua. But top 20 player Francesca Schiavone was a challenge too far in the main draw first round, defeating Yuan for the loss of just five games. Not one for being easily discouraged, she proceeded to come through qualifying for her fourth WTA Tour main draw and her first at Grand Slam level, the Australian Open, with straight-sets wins over Yulia Beygelzimer of Ukraine, Elena Baltacha of Great Britain and Bethanie Mattek of the United States. In the main draw, she defeated Melinda Czink 6–4, 6–2, then faced the world No. 2, Kim Clijsters, and took six games from her; but the result in the Belgian's favour was virtually a foregone conclusion. Still, these performances had lifted her dramatically to 108th in the world in just one month. After a couple of disappointing qualifying losses in early February, to Vania King at Tokyo and Akgul Amanmuradova at Pattaya, Yuan next broke through in Memphis, defeating Christina Wheeler once more to gain the main draw, where she battled past talented Uzbekistan player Varvara Lepchenko in three sets before succumbing to the solid American Jill Craybas in round two. This performance was enough to restore her to a level-best world No. 108 as February came to a close. Then at Indian Wells in March, she came through qualifying with impressive wins over Angela Haynes and (in three sets) Varvara Lepchenko, then advanced to round three of the main draw with straight-sets wins over Akiko Morigami and Catalina Castaño. Even if she does not win her third-round tie, the estimated 39