Fifth-seeded Liudmila Samsonova and sixth-seeded Leylah Fernandez both advanced in straight sets in the opening round of the Abu \u200dDhabi Open, played on the outdoor hard courts in the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n
Samsonova<\/a>, from Russia, defeated Sofia Kenin<\/a>, 6-4, 6-0<\/a>, while the \u200bCanadian native Fernandez<\/a> knocked off Chloe Paquet<\/a> of France, 6-0, 6-3.<\/a><\/p>\n The first four games of the Samsonova-Kenin match all featured breaks of serve, before both players steadied. \u200cKenin had two break chances at 4-4, but could not convert, while Samsonova \u200ccame through at 30-40 to win the first set. She cruised in 26 minutes, winning 26 of 35 points in the second set.<\/p>\n Fernandez captured her match in 65 minutes, winning 54 of 80 points (67.5%) contested.<\/p>\n Americans won in the two other \u2060main draw matches played on the first day of main draw competition. McCartney Kessler<\/a> \u200cdefeated Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova<\/a>, 6-3, 6-3<\/a>, while Hailey Baptiste<\/a> rallied to edge Serbia’s Teodora \u200bKostovic<\/a>, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4<\/a>.<\/p>\n China’s Yue Yuan<\/a> upset sixth-seeded Antonia Ruzic<\/a> of Croatia 6-4, 5-7, 6-2<\/a> on the first day of main draw competition on the indoor hard courts in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.<\/p>\n The match took 2 hours, 35 minutes and featured 14 breaks of service. Yuan, ranked No. 130, raced out \u200cto a 5-0 lead in the deciding set, failed on two match points in the sixth game, but prevailed on her next service opportunity.<\/p>\n The other seeded player in action, No. 8 Anna Bondar<\/a> of Hungary, won a three-setter over \u2060Germany’s Ella Seidel<\/a>, 4-6, 7-6 (6), 6-0.<\/a> Seidel took an early 3-1 lead in the second-set tie-breaker, but Bondar won four straight points to take control.<\/p>\n In the other two main draw matches, Spain’s Sara Sorribes Tormo<\/a> upset Bulgaria’s Viktoriya Tomova<\/a>, 6-2, 7-5<\/a> and Ukraine’s Oleksandra Oliynuykova<\/a> ousted Egypt’s Mayar Sherif<\/a>, 6-7 (6), 6-4, 6-4<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sixth-seeded Caty McNally<\/a> knocked off Suzan Lamens<\/a> of the Netherlands, 6-3, 7-5<\/a>, on the first day of main draw action in Ostrava, Czech Republic.<\/p>\n No. 8 Hungarian Panna Udvardy<\/a> edged Darja Vidmanova<\/a> of the Czech Republic, 7-5, 6-3<\/a>, but seventh-seeded Moyuka Uchijima<\/a> of Japan fell to \u2060Armenian Elina Avanesyan<\/a>, 6-3, 2-6, 6-3<\/a>.<\/p>\n McNally trailed, 4-2, in the second set, \u200cbut broke Lamens’ serve and eventually evened the set at 5-5. In an 11-point 11th game, the Cincinnati native broke for the sixth time in the match and held at love to triumph.<\/p>\n In the two other main draw matches, Katie Volynets<\/a> routed Poland’s Linda Klimovicova<\/a>, \u20606-2, 6-1<\/a>, while the host nation’s Tereza Martincova<\/a> stunned Hungary’s Dalma \u200bGalfi<\/a>, 2-6, 6-3, 7-5<\/a>. Martincova is ranked No. 469, while Galfi is at \u206091.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fifth-seeded Liudmila Samsonova and sixth-seeded Leylah Fernandez both advanced in straight sets in the opening round of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-457155","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}