The Canadian won her first match since playing in the US Open final beating the Frenchwomen in straight sets.
Leylah Fernandez is into the second round of the BNP Paribas Open after beating the world number 64 and Nice, France native Alize Cornet 6-2, 6-3 in one hour and 24 minutes in front of a packed Stadium 2 with a lot of Canadian fans.
“I’m very happy with the way I played and I trained very hard after the US Open final and playing for the first time in Indian Wells and I was happy that the crowd came and cheered me on and I am happy to play in front of them.”
The Montreal native fired 24 winners and broke serve five times in a match where she featured some amazing aggressive groundstrokes that simply seemed to overpower her opponent.
The Canadian got off to a roaring start breaking serve in the second game of the match and turned that into a double break before the world number 64 got one of the breaks back but was broken once again when serving to stay in the first set and Fernandez wrapped up the first set.
During the timeout between sets Cornet called for the trainer to have a look at her upper right leg which was taped and she took a medical timeout to have it taken care of.
The timeout seemed to work as she broke in the third game of the second set breaking the Montreal native serve with a stunning cross-court winner but the Canadian broke right back the following game and went back on serve.
It stayed on serve until 4-3 with the world number 28 fighting for that crucial break of serve with long intense rallies and coming up with powerful forehand winners and managed to break to take a 5-3 lead.
With fresh balls in play after the ball change, Fernandez served out the match to set up a third-round encounter with the Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova who earlier beat the American Madison Keys in straight sets 6-3, 6-1.
After the match in her on-court interview, she was asked to give her thoughts on her first experience in the Californian desert.
“I’m in love with Indian Wells and the people here are so amazing and so nice and so welcoming and for me, it’s tennis paradise and I am enjoying every minute of it.”
This will be the first-ever meeting between the Canadian and the Russian.
