Angelique Kerber's Upper Austria Ladies Linz campaign falters at opening hurdle as Lucia Bronzetti eases through

After making her main return after the United Cup and losing to Danielle Collins at the Australian Open, the next stop on the comeback of Angelique Kerber was the Upper Austria Ladies Linz, but she was blown away in a masterclass from Italian ace, Lucia Bronzetti 6-1, 6-3.

Kerber has won only one match since returning seeing off Ajla Tomljanovic at the United Cup and lost in three sets to Collins in Australia. She spoke in the run-up about a refreshing focus of having her daughter with her now instead of only being solely about tennis but the three-time Grand Slam champion and former World No.1 will now have to go back to the drawing board.

Alarmingly, she won only 46% of her points on her first serve and 56% on her second serve as Bronzetti on the other hand was almost double with 83% and 75% showing the gulf in class and she took 5/11 break point chances as well as winning just under double the amount of points in just over an hour.

Kerber lost serve straight away and only held once throughout the opening set as Bronzetti picked her apart. The second was less comprehensive as Kerber kept with her in the early going including breaking back to make it 3-2 after losing her serve only to get the opportunity to hold after going 15-40 down and spurning it allowing Bronzetti to steam to the finish from there with comfortable holds of serve. Next up will be Elise Mertens, but in a low quality field as such for a WTA 500, Bronzetti sits in a tough section.

Jelena Ostapenko is the top seed and will face Clara Tauson in a section that features Jaqueline Cristian and Jodie Burrage with the winner of Mertens and Bronzetti facing Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova or Katie Boulter.