Canada scored a hat trick on the first day of singles matches at the US Open tennis tournament. A grand slam was even accessible on Monday evening.
Félix Auger-Aliassime, Bianca Andreescu and Rebecca Marino all earned their byes to the second round of the last major tournament of the 2022 professional tennis season.
This tour de force, Lavalloise Leylah Fernandez, women’s singles finalist at Flushing Meadows in 2021, was going to try to reproduce it in the evening against the Frenchwoman Océane Dodin.
Auger-Aliassime and Andreescu in particular gave uneven performances and each lost a set along the way.
Semi-finalist last year and sixth seed in 2022, Auger-Aliassime took the measure of Swiss qualifier Alexander Ritschard, 186th player in the world, in four sets of 6-3, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 , in just over three hours at the end of the afternoon.
Auger-Aliassime had 13 aces, but also had eight double faults. He even found himself in a precarious position on his serve more often than his opponent, when he faced 12 break points, compared to eight for Ritschard. The Montrealer, however, saved 10 of those 12 break points, and he converted four of his eight opportunities.
Auger-Aliassime needed just one break to win each of the first two sets, but Ritschard surprised him by winning the third set with a break in the fourth game.
In the fourth set, Auger-Aliassime built a comfortable 5-1 cushion, with back-to-back breaks in the fourth and sixth games. The Montrealer let slip a first chance to end the duel on his serve in the seventh game, but he recovered without problem in the ninth.
In the second round, Auger-Aliassime will face Britain’s Jack Draper, who defeated Finland’s Emil Ruusuvuori 6-4.6-3, 6-3.
As for Andreescu, a choppy performance didn’t stop her earning a 6-0, 3-6, 6-1 win over France’s Harmony Tan.
Dominant in the first set, when she won three games without conceding a single point, Andreescu complicated the task at the start of the second, yielding the first four games.
After committing a single unforced error in the first set, she totaled 15 in the second to allow Tan to tie the game and force a final set.
She regained her composure in the third set to advance to the second round, where she will face 15th-seeded Brazilian Beatriz Haddad Maia, who crushed Croatian Ana Konjuh 6-0, 6-0, in an hour.
Later in the afternoon, Vancouver’s Rebecca Marino put on the most convincing performance of the Canadian trio, defeating Poland’s Magdalena Frech 6-2, 6-3 in 69 minutes.
Marino had two breaks of service in each of the two sets and lost serve only once, in the opening game of the second set.
In the second round, Marino will face Daria Snigur of Ukraine, who upset seventh-seeded Simona Halep of Romania in straight sets 6-2, 0-6, 6- 4.