Leylah Fernandez is through to the second round of the 2021 Serbia Ladies Open after defeated Polona Hercog 7-5, 6-1, in match delayed twice by rain.
A match originally scheduled for noon on Monday was pushed back by three hours after the day began with a torrential down pour. From the beginning of the match both players struggled with their respective serves and this match featured a lot of breaks.
It was the Slovenian who had the first chance to break after the Canadian double faulted but the Montreal native managed to save with an impressive forehand winner.
After holding serve she went on the attack and managed to get the early break this time with a powerful backhand winner to take an early 2-1 lead and that’s when it started to rain again play was suspended for another four hours.
Both players returned to court at 7:00pm local time hoping they would be able to finish the match and it was the Canadian who would get off to a rough start double faulting again on breakpoint to go back on serve at 2-2.
The next three games both players failed to hold their serve and there was three consecutive breaks of serve before Fernandez was able to save a breakpoint at 4-3 and hold serve.
At 5-4 with the Canadian serving for the first set the Slovenian managed to earn two more breakpoints and broke once again before being unable to hold serve and the Canadian would serve out the first set.
The second set was much more straight forward with the Montreal native earning another breakpoint in the first game and breaking to take an early 1-0 lead and managed to break once more after consolidating the break.
Hercog did her best to stay in the match and earned a breakpoint but the Canadian did a good job saving it and at 5-1 Fernandez served out the match to book her spot in the next round.
After the match in her post match press conference she spoke about how happy she was to get the win.
” It’s very important, I haven’t played well in the last two tournaments but I am very happy with my performance today and with the way I played, and now let’s focus on the next match”.
In her next match she will either face Viktoriya Tomova or Lola Radivojevic and she gave her thoughts on her next possible opponent.
” I’ve trained before with Viktoriya Tomova, they’re both incredible players so I know it’s going to be a tough match and I think when we play I will focus on my match and what we can do”.
Fernandez is scheduled to play that second round match on Wednesday but is scheduled to play doubles on Tuesday with fellow Canadian Gabby Dabrowski as they face the number three seeds from China Xu and Zhang.
