Venus advances, Mladenovic upset in Rogers Cup
Venus Williams prevailed in a three-setter but French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko and 13th seed Kristina Mladenovic crashed out of Rogers Cup with first-round defeats on Monday.
Williams outlasted a lengthy rain delay and Romanian opponent Irina-Camelia Begu to win her opening match 6-1, 3-6, 6-3.
After taking the opening set in dominant fashion, the American found herself in a fight as Begu rallied back to win the set.
The decisive set was a rollercoaster with Williams moving ahead 3-1 only to lose consecutive games before bouncing back to seize three straight games and the match. Mladenovic was swept aside 6-2, 6-3 by Czech Barbora Strycova, while Ostapenko fell to American Varvara Lepchenko 1-6 ,7-6(2), 7-6(5) as upsets marked the start of the tournament.
Nick Kyrgios looked fresh and focused as he blazed to a 6-1, 6-2 first-round win over Viktor Troicki at the Rogers Cup but warned he was rolling the dice with a hip injury that could flare up at any time. The wobbly hip that hit Kyrgios’s grasscourt season, with first-round retirements at Queen’s and Wimbledon, has followed him to the hardcourt season.
“I’m feeling it all the time,” said Kyrgios. “It’s not something that is just going to heal. I can compete so that’s the most I can do at the moment.”
Former French Open finalist Sara Errani must serve a two-month doping ban after testing positive for the banned substance letrozole in a test taken in February, the International Tennis Federation said Monday.
Errani’s defense blamed contamination from her mother’s cancer medication.
An adjudication panel ruled that Errani’s fault was “at the lower end of the scale” but that she should still be banned for two months backdated to August 3.