Rain delays Ashleigh Barty's Western & Southern opener

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[August 18, 2021]    A rain-filled day caused major delays Tuesday at the Western & Southern Open in Mason, Ohio, pushing back top-seeded Ashleigh Barty's opening-round match until Wednesday.

 


Barty, a 25-year-old Australian who received a first-round bye, is set to oppose the United Kingdom's Heather Watson. The match will be the first for Barty since she lost her opening match at the Tokyo Olympics to Spain's Sara Sorribes Toro.

Before that, Barty won the championship at Wimbledon for her second career Grand Slam title.

Despite the weather-prompted pauses, the final 12 first-round matches were contested Tuesday.

Tenth-seeded Belinda Bencic of Switzerland, 12th-seeded Simona Halep of Romania and 14th-seeded Victoria Azarenka of Belarus advanced.

Halep got past Poland's Magda Linette 6-4, 3-6, 6-1 in a result that was notable for being the Romanian's first win in three months. She was sidelined by a calf tear before returning to play last week at Montreal, where she dropped her opening match to Danielle Collins.

Halep told Tennis Channel she missed "the competition, the nerves. I felt sick before the match in the stomach. I always get nervous before the matches, so I missed that a lot. And now, having it back, it feels like a life."

Coco Gauff, a 17-year-old Atlanta native, cruised to a 6-1, 6-2 win over Taiwan's Su-Wei Hsieh. The result sends Gauff to a second-round matchup with second-seeded Naomi Osaka of Japan.

Gauff said of her rain-delayed, 62-minute triumph, "Dealing with the rain is never easy, but I came in making sure I had a good warmup before I went on the court. I tried to take the momentum I had at the start of the match into after the pause."

Osaka will oppose Gauff for the third time, with Osaka having won in the third round of the 2019 U.S. Open and Gauff having triumphed in the third round of the 2020 Australian Open.

Gauff said, "For me, the second match (against Osaka) I learned that I can perform well under the pressure, and that I do have a lot more fun on the court when I try not to focus on the expectations of other people and myself."

Other winners Tuesday included the Czech Republic's Karolina Muchova, Kazakhstan's Elena Rybakina, Russia's Veronika Kudermetova, Tunisia's Ons Jabeur, Ukraine's Dayana Yastremska and the United States' Bernarda Pera and Jessica Pegula.

France's Caroline Garcia outlasted the United States' Sloane Stephens 7-6 (7), 4-6, 6-4 in a match that ended at 2:09 a.m. local time.

--Field Level Media

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