The grass court season has fully begun and two players who have returned to the surface for the first time in a while in Naomi Osaka and Bianca Andreescu are through to the second round. The former took down fourth seed Elise Mertens.
Osaka kicked off her grass court season with a 6-2, 6-4 win over Mertens in the first win on grass for the former World No.1 since Wimbledon back in 2019. She had a memorable display last week at the French Open reaching the second round and being the player to push Iga Swiatek the distance.
In a 70 minute win, her strong serving in particular was a highlight in a surface that she has never really thrived on previously. Now Osaka sits at 4-2 over Mertens in terms of head to head. After saving break point in her second service game, she did not face a break point for the rest of the match.
She won 90% of her first serve points and was also perfect on sealing her own breaks with three against the Mertens serve. She finished the match with 21 winners to 13 unforced errors. The victory saw Osaka avenge a defeat to Mertens at Indian Wells in March.
Whilst Andreescu faced more adversity in moving through. She blew a first set lead going 4-1 up before taking down wildcard Eva Vedsser in three sets. She lost the first set from there. But rallied to come back and win in three. She sealed it 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 and in 18 break point attempts, she converted four of them. Yue Yuan is next up and she could face Osaka in the Quarter-Finals.
Yuan was one of multiple winners on Tuesday morning with Emina Bektas taking down Anna Blinkova, the former defeat Diana Shnaider. Whilst Jessica Pegula was an early victor and she will now face Aliaksandra Krunic.
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🇨🇦 First match on grass first win on grass this year for 🇨🇦 Bianca Andreescu who blew 4-1 lead in 1st set but takes out Wildcard Eva Vedsser 4-6 6-3 6-2 in 1st Round of Libema Open...BA 18 break pt attempts...converted 4 of them..(6) Yuan next #WTA#LibemaOpen