Raducanu and Osaka advance to second round at Omnium Banque Nationale
Two Grand Slam champions, Emma Raducanu and Naomi Osaka, picked up straight-sets wins in the first round of the Omnium Banque Nationale presente par Rogers on Monday.
Montreal: Draws | Scores | Order of play
Here's the breakdown of both of those matches:
Raducanu rolls: Great Britain's Raducanu continued her solid start to the North American summer hard-court season by defeating Romania's Elena-Gabriela Ruse 6-2, 6-4.
Up to World No.33 in the PIF WTA Singles Rankings, Raducanu reached her first semifinal of the season last week on the hard courts of Washington, D.C. She picked up another summertime victory in Montreal, beating Ruse in 1 hour and 37 minutes of play.
Raducanu, the 2021 US Open champion, has won four of her five hard-court matches since her grass-court season ended with a close third-round loss to World No.1 Aryna Sabalenka on Centre Court of Wimbledon, her home Grand Slam.
In Montreal on Monday, Raducanu stared down five break points in her very first service game of the match, but she was able to survive that peril and hold on. After that, Raducanu rolled to the one-set lead, winning the last five games consecutively.
Ruse got a pair of service breaks in the second set, but Raducanu was not derailed and the Briton took the lead for good by breaking for 5-4. Raducanu eased home from there, and she is now a perfect 4-0 against Romanian players in tour-level main-draw matches.
Raducanu is hoping for another big result at a WTA 1000 hard-court event this season. She made her first career WTA 1000 quarterfinal earlier this year on the hard courts of Miami.
In the second round, Raducanu will take on No.32 seed Peyton Stearns of the United States, who had a first-round bye as a seeded player. Raducanu has won both of her previous meetings with Stearns in straight sets -- although three of those four sets were settled by tiebreaks.
Osaka advances: In the following match on Montreal's Centre Court, four-time Grand Slam champion Osaka of Japan defeated Canadian qualifier Ariana Arseneault 6-4, 6-2 in 1 hour and 16 minutes.
World No. 515 Arseneault was making her Hologic WTA Tour main-draw debut after defeating Destanee Aiava to qualify for the main draw.
The 23-year-old Canadian hung tough with Osaka in the opening set, coming back from a break down to pull back on serve at 4-4. But Osaka's rally groundstrokes were too tough down the stretch as she won the next two games to lead by a set.
The second set went more smoothly for Osaka as she improved to 11-1 this year against players ranked outside the Top 100 (the loss was to Belinda Bencic at the Australian Open -- of course, Bencic is already back in the Top 20).
Osaka will take on No. 13 seed Liudmila Samsonova in the second round. They have split their four previous meetings -- but Osaka has won both of their hard-court encounters.