2021 US Open finalist Leylah Fernandez entered her third-round match against Roland Garros champion Mirra Andreeva at the National Bank Open on Friday having lost her last seven matches against Top 10 opponents.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She snapped that streak in a big way to match her best-ever result at her country’s signature event.<\/p>\n
Fernandez routed the No. 5 seed 6-1, 6-4 in 1 hour and 21 minutes to return to not just the Round of 16 in Toronto, a result she previously recorded in Montreal in 2023, but score her first Top 10 victory in more than a year. She last beat a player ranked as highly as Andreeva when she beat then-World No. 4 Jessica Pegula on the way to winning the Mubadala DC Open last year.<\/p>\n
Fernandez cruised against an out-of-sorts Andreeva up until 6-1, 5-1, when the 20-year-old came alive to hold from 0-30 in the eighth game and close the game to 5-4. But a key forehand miss at 0-15 on Fernandez’s serve at 5-4 turned what turned out the be the final game around, and the No. 30 seed wrapped up the win three points later.<\/p>\n
That moment was a microcosm of the match from Fernandez’s perspective.<\/p>\n
“The key for me was to stay positive, stay strong, and to keep being patient. I mean, she wasn’t going to give away some easy balls,” Fernandez said afterwards. “In the beginning there were a lot of long rallies, and that was a key for me to kind of stick with it, trusting in my abilities, and to continue on playing my game throughout the match.”<\/p>\n
The stat line of the match agreed with the left-hander’s strategy. Andreeva made 19 unforced errors in the first set, and 34 for the match — double her 17 winners. Fernandez, meanwhile, was tidy with eight winners and seven unforced errors.<\/p>\n
“[I was] telling myself to put the ball back in. I mean, I’ve trained a lot growing up in being consistent and hitting like a hundred balls in a row, and trying to hit, you know, a series where none of us miss,” Fernandez continued. “It’s like that’s where I come back to. Like, I know I can do it.<\/p>\n
“There has been times where I just want to finish the point quickly, and in that moment I was like, no, trust in my abilities, trust in my fitness. I’ve put in the work. I know physically I’m strong. I know I can endure long rallies, long matches. So if it’s going to take a hundred balls to hit to put it in to break her down, then so be it.<\/p>\n
“That was kind of the mentality. I knew that if I can do it, and if I can put a little bit more pressure, I will have my chances to hit winners, or to take more chances in the point.”<\/p>\n
More to come…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2021 US Open finalist Leylah Fernandez entered her third-round match against Roland Garros champion Mirra Andreeva at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":847361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747,83],"class_list":["post-847360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847360","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=847360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/847361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}