TORONTO \u2014 Canada’s Leylah Fernandez will face a tough test if she advances at the National Bank Open presented by Rogers.<\/p>\n
The No. 30 seed from Laval, Que., has a opening-round bye and will play either Mexico’s Renata Zarazua or Germany’s Tamara Korpatsch in her first match following Friday’s draw for the women’s bracket.<\/p>\n
Fernandez could then face a potential round of 32 meeting with No. 5 seed Mirra Andreeva of Russia.<\/p>\n
World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus tops the draw, with second seed Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan, two-time champion Jessica Pegula and Coco Gauff, both of the United States, along with Poland’s Iga Swiatek among the favourites.<\/p>\n
Bianca Andreescu of Mississauga, Ont. \u2014 the 2019 NBO champion \u2014 opens against Czechia’s Nikola Bartunkova, while wild-card Venus Williams of the U.S drew Russia’s Kamilla Rakhimova. The 46-year-old Williams owns seven Grand Slam singles titles, but has never captured the Canadian crown.<\/p>\n
Vancouver’s Rebecca Marino, London’s Kayla Cross, Toronto’s Cadence Brace and Richmond Hill, Ont., natives Ariana Arseneault and Carol Zhao round out the Canadian singles entries.<\/p>\n
Qualifying begins Saturday, with main-draw play scheduled to start Sunday. Defending champion Victoria Mboko will miss the tournament because of a knee injury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 Canada’s Leylah Fernandez will face a tough test if she advances at the National Bank Open…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":838885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[49,48,3302],"class_list":["post-838884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838884","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=838884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/838885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}