Quebecer Leylah Fernandez scored two victories to raise the curtain of the women’s tennis tournament in Doha, Qatar, on Monday.
The 21-year-old from Laval first defeated 12th seed Liudmila Samsonova 7-5, 7-6 (4) in the first round of the women’s singles tournament. She then joined forces with Georgian Oksana Kalashnikova to win 6-4, 3-6, 13-11 against Italians Jasmine Paolini and Sara Errani in the first round of women’s doubles.
Fernandez broke early in the second set against Samsonova, before quickly taking a 5-2 lead.
The Russian, however, responded with a break, before narrowing the gap to 5-4 and forcing a tiebreaker.
Fernandez showed great poise during the tiebreaker, and she sealed the outcome of the match with her first match point, when Samsonova returned serve too long. The match concluded after two hours and 10 minutes of play.
The representative of the maple leaf leveled her career record against Samsonova at 1-1. The Russian triumphed in their first career duel, in the second round of the 2022 US Open.
Fernandez will now face Spaniard Paula Badosa.
At the end of the day, Fernandez and Kalashnikova held on to struggle to get the better of Errani and Paolini. They thus signed their first victory together in doubles.
Fernandez and Kalashnikova won 49.3% of the points during the match, and 54.2% of the points in the decisive set.
They will face the favorites of the Qatari tournament, the Belgian Elise Mertens and the Taiwanese Hsieh Su-wei, in the next round.