Montreal: Homegrown hero Eugenie Bouchard reached the second round of the WTA hardcourt tournament in Montreal with a dramatic three-set victory on Tuesday, lending a little star power as the event lost French Open champion Garbine Muguruza.
In her past two appearances at her home event, Bouchard had failed to win a match.
But this time she gave fans what they wanted to see with a 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (7/3) victory over Czech Lucie Safarova.
Afer dominating the first set, she made a sluggish start to the second and Safarova took advantage to force a third frame.
Bouchard was unable to convert three match points at 6-5 in the third but, after Safarova forced the tiebreaker, the Canadian roared back from a 3-1 deficit to seize the victory.
“The crowd was incredible,” said Bouchard, who begged off a longer post-match press conference pleading a stomach ache.
That was after Spain’s Muguruza, the world number three and third seed, pulled out of her opening match complaining of gastrointestinal illness minutes before she was to take on Britain’s Naomi Broady.
It was another high-profile defection after world number one Serena Williams withdrew with inflammation in her shoulder over the weekend.
“I’m pretty disappointed, I practised a lot for this tournament,” Muguruza said. “Since yesterday, I have kind of been feeling weird and I spoke with the doctor and everything. I thought today I was going to feel better, but in the last moment I didn’t feel good enough to go on court and give my best.”
Although it was a second-round match, Muguruza enjoyed a first-round bye. Organisers filled her place in the draw with lucky loser Varvara Lepchenko of the United States, who defeated Broady 6-4, 3-6, 6-3.
In the only other second-round match of the day, fifth-seeded Romanian Simona Halep defeated Australian Daria Gavrilova 6-2, 6-3.
Halep and Gavrilova had split their last two meetings.
But Halep, coming off her second title of the season at home in Bucharest, was in control throughout, never facing a break point in the first set and shaking off an early tremor in the second to win in 86 minutes.
“She’s a very strong player,” Halep, a former French Open champion, said.
“I played her on the clay courts in Rome, she beat me there, and I knew how to play today.”
Canadian Francoise Abanda also made it through to the second round, downing China’s Zheng Saisai 6-1, 7-5 in a match held over from Monday because of lengthy rain delays.
After the match, Zheng took to Twitter to express displeasure with the stringing of her racquets.
“I would like to congratulate Francoise on the victory well done this evening,” wrote Zheng, a quarter-finalist at Stanford last week. “And taking nothing to take away from her, I would also like to mention the lack of professionalism for the stringing service at Coup Rogers.”
Zheng said both of her racquets had been mistakenly strung with 10 pounds lighter tension than she had requested.
Britain’s Johanna Konta, less than 48 hours removed from lifting her first WTA title with an upset of Venus Williams in Stanford on Sunday, reached the second round with a 6-4, 6-2 victory over American Shelby Rogers.
Konta, who moved up from 18th to 14th in the world on the strength of her Stanford run and is now knocking on the door of the top 10.
Only three other British players, Virginia Wade, Sue Barker and Joe Durie, have made the top 10.
Meanwhile, Gael Monfils followed up his first tournament title in more than two years by barrelling into the second round of the Toronto Masters on Tuesday.
The flamboyant Frenchman, seeded 10th and fresh off his triumph in Washington, defeated Portugal’s Joao Sousa 6-3, 6-3.
He’s hoping this week to improve on his best Canadian result, a quarter-final run in 2011.
Monfils, who defeated big-serving Croatian Ivo Karlovic in the final in Washington on Sunday, said conditions were much different in Toronto.
“I think the court is slower here. It’s for sure less humidity and a little bit colder,” he said. “The balls are flying more. It’s quite a big change, actually.”
Monfils notched his 30th match win of the season to open his campaign at the tournament that is the last before the Rio Olympics.
The often-injured Monfils said that he had just heard the news that Roger Federer’s 2016 season was over, as the Swiss great will miss Rio and the US Open as he undergoes rehab for a knee injury.
“We all have these (injuries),” Monfils said. “For sure we use our knee very, very, very much. Every surface, every court.
“For me it was tough to balance my power between my hamstring and my quadriceps and even my calf, to have enough support for my knees,” Monfils, 29, said.
“It’s a daily treatment, sometimes it takes a long time to feel 100 per cent.”
In other early results, veteran Czech qualifier Radek Stepanek knocked out French 14th seed Benoit Paire 6-1, 6-3 to book a date with Canadian wild card Peter Polansky.
Taiwan’s Lu Yen-Hsun beat Alexander Zverev, a Washington semi-finalist, 7-5, 6-3.
The 19-year-old German was making his tournament debut ranked a career-best 25th, He is the youngest in the top 25 since Richard Gasquet 11 years ago.
Lu will next take on Canadian fourth seed and Wimbledon finalist Milos Raonic, the 2013 finalist who lost his opening match at home a year ago.
Three Americans advanced to the second round with Jared Donaldson defeating Australian John Millman 6-4, 6-3 and Dennis Novikov dispatching Argentine Federico Delbonis 6-4, 6-3. Rajeev Ram beat fading Latvian Ernests Gulbis 6-4, 6-2.
The top eight seeds enjoy first-round byes. World number one Novak Djokovic is due to launch his campaign on Wednesday against Gilles Muller.
