{"id":829994,"date":"2026-07-27T21:23:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T21:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/829994\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T21:23:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T21:23:13","slug":"canadas-leylah-fernandez-begins-title-defence-with-win-at-d-c-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/829994\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada&#8217;s\u00a0Leylah\u00a0Fernandez\u00a0begins title defence with win at D.C. Open"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON \u2014 Canada&#8217;s Leylah Fernandez opened her title defence with a first-round victory at the D.C. Open on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Fernandez, the tournament&#8217;s seventh seed, downed Poland&#8217;s Magda Linette 6-1, 6-4, winning the match in one hour 19 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>The 23-year-old from Laval, Que., captured the title at the WTA 500 hard-court event last year for the biggest tournament win of her career.<\/p>\n<p>Fernandez ranks 34th in the world but has struggled to find a rhythm this year, posting a 13-19 record in singles.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, she hit two aces and converted five of nine break-point opportunities. Linette, meanwhile, capitalized on just one of three.<\/p>\n<p>Fernandez will face the winner of a match between Alexandra Eala of the Philippines and Zheng Qinwen in the round of 16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 Canada&#8217;s Leylah Fernandez opened her title defence with a first-round victory at the D.C. Open on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":829995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-829994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829994","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=829994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/829995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}