Victoria Mboko is off to a winning start in the American swing of the tennis schedule.<\/p>\n
The Canadian downed Australia’s Kimberly Birrell 6-4, 7-6 (5) on Friday in the second round of the BNP Paribas Open on Friday in Indian Wells, Calif.<\/p>\n
Mboko, seeded 10th, got a first-round bye before knocking off the world No. 69.<\/p>\n
Mboko had seven aces to five double faults and broke on five of her seven chances.<\/p>\n
The 10th-seeded Mboko also won 69 per cent of first-serve points.<\/p>\n
Birrell had two aces to four double faults and converted four of her seven break-point opportunities.<\/p>\n
She won just 54 per cent of first-serve points.<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old Mboko has already reached finals in Adelaide and Qatar this year, along with a run to the round of 16 at the Australian Open.<\/p>\n
Mboko will next face No. 23 seed Anna Kalinskaya of Russia.<\/p>\n
On the men’s side, Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime rallied to beat French veteran Gael Monfils 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-4 in second-round action on Friday.<\/p>\n
The ninth-seeded Canadian will play the winner of a match between 17th-seeded Russian Andrey Rublev and Gabriel Diallo of Montreal.<\/p>\n
Against Monfils, Auger-Aliassime finished with 14 aces, four double faults, 34 winners and 29 unforced errors. Monfils had 12 aces, five double faults, 31 winners and 21 unforced errors.<\/p>\n
The Canadian saved two break points and won two of five. Monfils saved three of five break points and won none of the two opportunities he had.<\/p>\n
Later Friday, unseeded Denis Shapovalov of Richmond Hill, Ont. beat No. 29 seed Tomas Martin Etcheverry of Argentina 6-3, 2-6, 7-6 (5) in a second-round match.<\/p>\n
Shapovalov next faces No. 2 seed Jannik Sinner of Italy.<\/p>\n
Diallo and Leylah Fernandez will play their second-round matches on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u2014 with files from the Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victoria Mboko is off to a winning start in the American swing of the tennis schedule. The Canadian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44],"class_list":{"0":"post-519977","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}