(Madrid) Quebecer Eugenie Bouchard lost in two sets (6-2 and 7-5) to Italian Martina Trevisan in the second round of the Madrid tennis tournament on Friday.
Facing the holder of 20e rank in the WTA rankings, Bouchard registered three service breaks in as many attempts, but was also the victim of six breaks, three in each of the two sets, in 10 attempts.
The last of these breaks occurred on the 11e game in the second set, giving Trevisan a 6-5 lead. The Italian secured victory a game later, on her third match point.
In the opening set, Bouchard quickly found herself facing a 0-4 deficit. She obtained her first break of the match in the sixth game before suffering the same fate in the next game.
Neither player was able to win on serve. Trevisan won 57% of the points after placing his first ball in play, compared to 54% for Bouchard.
The latter, however, caused a lot of harm by winning only 28% of the points when she had to use her second service ball. Trevisan was significantly more effective, with a rate of 60%.
From qualifying and ranked 285e in the world, Bouchard earned her ticket to the second round with a three-set victory (6-7, 6-2, 6-2) over Ukraine’s Dayana Yastremska on Wednesday. Trevisan was automatically qualified in the second round as 18e first in the series.
Andreescu is just passing
In addition, Friday marked the return of Bianca Andreescu after a month’s absence. The Ontarian, however, lost to Chinese Wang Xiyu, who had the upper hand (3-6, 7-6 and 6-2).
PHOTO JIM RASSOL, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Bianca Andreescu, during her last match, last March, at the Miami tournament
On March 27, Andreescu injured her ankle during her fourth round match at the Miami tournament, against Ekaterina Alexandrova.
This injury forced Andreescu to skip the duel between Canada and Belgium in the Billie-Jean-King Cup two weeks ago in Vancouver.
Andreescu’s stamina was tested against Wang. Their duel lasted 2 hours and 50 minutes.
Visibly at the end of her rope, Andreescu hit a ball between her legs during a rally at 30-30 and when she was serving at 2-5 in the third set. Wang has the point for a break point, which she converted to win.
Other Canadians
Also on Friday, while waiting to play their first singles match, Félix Auger-Aliassime and Denis Shapovalov formed a tandem and defeated Colombians Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah (7-6 and 7-6) in the first round of men’s doubles.
Auger-Aliassime and Shapovalov will open their singles tournament this Saturday against Serbia’s Dusan Lajovic and China’s Zhizhen Zhang, respectively, in second-round matches.
Ranked 7e and 21e seeds in the men’s singles draw, Auger-Aliassime and Shapovalov earned byes directly into the second round
In addition, the Canadian Gabriela Dabrowski and the Brazilian Luisa Stefani passed the first round of women’s doubles thanks to a victory (4-6, 6-2 and 10-7) over the duo composed of the American Sofia Kenin and the Polish Magda Linette.
