Jul 28, 2025, 10:38 PM ET<\/p>\n
MONTREAL — Genie Bouchard<\/a> extended her tennis career for at least one more match Monday, beating Emiliana Arango<\/a> 6-4, 2-6, 6-2 in the first round of the National Bank Open.<\/p>\n Bouchard, who reached the Wimbledon final and two other Grand Slam semifinals in 2014, announced this month that she would retire after a final appearance in her hometown tournament<\/a>.<\/p>\n She then opened it with her first WTA Tour victory since 2023 — and the 300th of her career — and advanced to face No. 17 seed Belinda Bencic<\/a>.<\/p>\n Bouchard reached No. 5 in the rankings in 2014 but the 31-year-old has largely switched to pickleball, playing just one match this season before being given a wild card into the Montreal tournament.<\/p>\n Editor’s Picks<\/p>\n 2 Related<\/p>\n After splitting the first two sets, Bouchard broke the 82nd-ranked Arango twice — first with a forehand, then from the Colombian’s missed volley — to build a 5-1 lead in the decisive third.<\/p>\n Arango broke back with Bouchard serving for the match to make it 5-2, but the Canadian went up 40-love in the ensuing game. Arango then sent her backhand wide on Bouchard’s second match point.<\/p>\n Bouchard waved and blew kisses to the crowd after the win.<\/p>\n “I told my family that if I won, I would come out of retirement,” she said from center court. “I felt like the old Genie out there.”<\/p>\n Emma Raducanu<\/a>, playing just two days after losing in the semifinals in Washington<\/a>, beat Elena-Gabriela Ruse<\/a> 6-2, 6-4<\/a>. Naomi Osaka<\/a>, in her first tournament since announcing she would no longer work with coach Patrick Mouratoglou<\/a>, eliminated Ariana Arseneault<\/a> 6-4, 6-2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jul 28, 2025, 10:38 PM ET MONTREAL — Genie Bouchard extended her tennis career for at least one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-44295","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}