Bianca Andreescu broke from the start, quickly recovering to defeat American Lauren Davis in two identical rounds 6-4 and advance to the third round of the US Open on Thursday in New York.
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The 2019 champion took 97 minutes to finish this duel that had started badly for her. Davis actually won the first two games of the meeting to quickly take the reins.
In front of Andreescu, the world’s No. 98 racket could not keep up with the pace and win on serve. In particular, she played only 47% of the first serve balls, allowing her opponent to break them three times on five occasions in this duel.
The Canadian, seventh in the WTA rankings and sixth favorite, also ended the encounter with a break at the end of the second set.
In the round of 16, the representative of the maple leaf will cross with Belgium’s Gret Minin (104), the top scorer of Argentina Nadia Podroska and the Russian Lyudmila Samsonova, who reached the main draw of this major tournament with the title of “lucky loser”. The two players had never met on the field before.
“She’s a great player,” Minin said of Andreescu at a press conference. She struggles with injuries, but has always been a great player. She has a lot of variety in her game and I admire her. I definitely have to play my style and be aggressive; It’s hard to let her play.”
Andreescu is trying to restart a difficult season marked by injury and COVID-19. Since her appearance in the Miami Championship final, during which she was forced into retirement, she has racked up only four wins in nearly five months.
Leila Annie Fernandez and Gabriela Dabrowski win
Leila Annie Fernandez, for her part, cemented her winning streak by winning her first-round doubles match alongside New Zealander Irene Rotliff, ranked 108th in the world in the duos.
The winning duo needed only 69 minutes to beat American Christina McHale (95th) and Mexico’s Juliana Olmos (24th) in sets 6-4, 6-2.
Fernandez reached the third round of the singles competition on Wednesday and faces Japan’s defending champion and world number three Naomi Osaka on Friday.
Another Canadian tasted in the doubles win on Thursday. It is Gabriela Dabrowski (11), who defeated Swiss Victoria Golubic (131) and Slovenian Tamara Zidansek (72) in two sets 6-1, 6-2 with Brazilian Luisa Stefani (17).
Dabrowski and Stefani are the fifth seed for this event.