Canadians Bianca Andreescu and Victoria Mboko cruised to wins over native favourites Wednesday in opening-round motion on the Italian Open WTA 1000 tennis event.
Toronto’s Mboko posted a snug 6-2, 6-3 victory over Italy’s Arianna Zucchini.
Mboko, who superior to her second profession 1000-series occasion by means of qualifying, transformed six break factors, together with three in a sequence that noticed the 18-year-old Canadian and Zucchini commerce breaks over the ultimate 5 video games of the second set.
Mboko, ranked 158th on this planet, has compiled a 33-3 document this season whereas racking up 5 titles on the lower-tier ITF circuit.
She’s going to face fourth seed Coco Gauff of the US within the second spherical.
Andreescu, from Mississauga, Ont., confronted few issues from Italy’s Federica Urgesi in a 6-0, 6-3 victory, successful 97.1 per cent of first service factors with out dealing with a break level in a dominant first set.
The 24-year-old cruised to a 5-1 lead within the second set earlier than Urgesi responded with a maintain and a break. Andreescu put the sport away together with her six break-point conversion on 10 possibilities.
Andreescu will face Twentieth-seed Donna Vekic of Croatia within the second spherical. Vekic gained the one different match between the 2 eventually 12 months’s Paris Olympics, which was additionally performed on clay.
Andreescu, a former world No. 4 and the 2019 U.S. Open champion, made her return from a six-month absence to the WTA circuit earlier this 12 months on the Open de Rouen. She improved to 2-3 on the season, together with her different victory coming on the Madrid Open WTA 1000 occasion.
The opposite Canadian within the ladies’s draw, Leylah Fernandez of Laval, Que., is seeded twenty fourth and has a first-round bye.
Felix Auger-Aliassime and Gabriel Diallo, each from Montreal, and Denis Shapovalov of Richmond Hill, Ont., are entered on the boys’s aspect.
Diallo faces American Marcos Giron in first-round motion Thursday whereas Auger-Aliassime and Shapovalov have byes.
