Serena rallies, Bouchard stumbles at Rogers Cup
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TOP-RANKED Serena Williams rebounded to beat Italy’s Flavia Pennetta 2-6, 6-3, 6-0 on Tuesday in the second round of the WTA Tour’s Rogers Cup.
“I was really frustrated with how I was playing,” Williams said. “And then I got really angry. ... So I said, ‘Serena, you’re going to have to be positive and be good to yourself out here’.”
The 21-time grand slam winner won a day after sister Venus Williams was eliminated in straight sets by Germany’s Sabine Lisicki.
The 33-year-old Williams blamed unforced errors for her early struggles.
“It was a good opportunity for me because I haven’t played a match on hardcourts since April-ish, early, early April, after Miami,” Williams said.
Williams won the first of her three Toronto titles in 2001.
Slumping Canadian Eugenie Bouchard dropped out, falling 0-6, 7-5, 2-6 to Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic in a first-round match. Bouchard has also lost 13 of her past 15 matches.
“It’s easy to let yourself get negative when you lose a couple of matches in a row or you know your body’s not feeling great. It’s definitely been a tough road. And I feel like I’m at least not going downwards anymore. I’m trying to go on the right path,” she said.
On other first-round matches, France’s Alize Cornet upset ninth-seeded Carla Suarez Navarro of Spain 6-3, 6-7 (2), 6-4; qualifier Mirjana Lucic-Baroni of Croatia beat 10th-seeded Karolina Pliskova 3-6, 7-6(5), 6-2; Belarus’ Victoria Azarenka beat Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina 6-1, 6-4, and German Angelique Kerber beat Japanese qualifier Misaki Doi 6-0, 6-1.
In Montreal, world No. 1 Novak Djokovic kicked off his bid for a fourth Canadian crown with a 6-3, 7-6 (4) second-round win over a stubborn Brazilian Thomaz Bellucci at the Rogers Cup on Tuesday.
Bellucci, with just one win in five visits to Canada and coming off a first-round loss at Washington, appeared to be the perfect opponent for Djokovic to launch his buildup to the US Open but provided a stiff test for the Serb.
“Match could have gone either way, honestly, especially in the second set,” Djokovic said after battling Bellucci for an hour and 50 minutes. “But we both had our chances to break. We got to the tiebreak, which I thought was fair, then it was anybody’s game.”
Djokovic will now wait for a winner from American Jack Sock and 14th seed Grigor Dimitrov. Sock beat Adrian Mannarino 6-2, 2-6, 7-6 (5) while Dimitrov eliminated Alexandr Dolgopolov 6-4, 7-5.
Ivo Karlovic of Croatia beat eighth seed Milos Raonic 7-6 (1), 7-6 (1), after the Canadian saved three match points before losing for his earliest exit in Montreal since 2010. The winner’s 22 aces sent him past 10,000 for his career.
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