{"id":47516,"date":"2025-07-30T12:31:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T12:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/47516\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T12:31:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T12:31:10","slug":"leylah-fernandez-criticizes-montreal-schedule-after-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/47516\/","title":{"rendered":"Leylah Fernandez criticizes Montreal schedule after loss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jul 29, 2025, 07:58 PM ET<\/p>\n<p>MONTREAL &#8212; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=3641\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Leylah Fernandez<\/a> criticized the schedule at the National Bank Open after the Canadian lost in the first round of her home tournament Tuesday, two days after winning the title in Washington.<\/p>\n<p>She was routed 6-4, 6-1 by Australian <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=14146\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Maya Joint<\/a> in just one hour, 15 minutes. Fernandez, the No. 24-ranked player, won her fourth career WTA title Sunday in Washington and was hoping for additional rest before returning to the court in Montreal.<\/p>\n<p>Fernandez said she received &#8220;a lot of promises&#8221; that she would play during Tuesday&#8217;s night session, giving her more time to recover between the two tournaments, but learned Sunday while traveling that that wouldn&#8217;t be the case.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I did not receive that,&#8221; she said. &#8220;That hurt me because I was very looking forward to be playing at night, but I guess it&#8217;s a little bit political issues at that point.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Editor&#8217;s Picks<a name=\"&amp;lpos=story:editorspicks:inline:1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/tennis\/story\/_\/id\/45837838\/leylah-fernandez-breezes-anna-kalinskaya-dc-open-title\" class=\"img-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1753878670_760_r1524454_1296x1296_1-1.jpg&#038;w=130&#038;h=130&#038;scale=crop&#038;location=center.jpeg\" width=\"65\" height=\"65\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Instead, top-seeded <a data-player-guid=\"ca44c2b0-9dea-ab40-2541-b50a4442ff8e\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=3626\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Coco Gauff<\/a> played fellow American <a data-player-guid=\"8d3efbda-5347-cd97-4119-75e9af53204f\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=3262\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Danielle Collins<\/a> to open the night session, overcoming 23 double-faults to win 7-5, 4-6, 7-6 (2) for her first victory since the French Open final.<\/p>\n<p>Valerie Tetreault, the National Bank Open tournament director in Montreal, responded that she promised Fernandez she would &#8220;fight so that she could have the time she wanted.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But I didn&#8217;t win my fight,&#8221; Tetreault said, noting that the WTA Tour determines scheduling. &#8220;I received the request for her to play in the evening. It&#8217;s my role to have conversations with the WTA, so I pushed as much as possible for her to have what she wanted.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Tetreault added that exceptions had already been made for Fernandez, the 2021 US Open runner-up. The 22-year-old and Joint were among the final three first-round matches held until Tuesday, despite Fernandez&#8217;s half of the bracket starting play Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;WTA protocols mean first-round matches need to be completed before second-round matches are played, ensuring fairness to all players,&#8221; Tennis Canada said in a statement. &#8220;Given Leylah won the title in Washington on Sunday, she was not able to arrive in Montreal until the early hours of Monday morning. As a result, the WTA made the decision to play her opening match in the latest possible first-round slot.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=9820\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mirra Andreeva<\/a>, the No. 4 seed, advanced to the third round when 2019 US Open champion <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=2979\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bianca Andreescu<\/a> withdrew after sustaining an ankle injury during her first-round victory. No. 7 seed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=2615\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jasmine Paolini<\/a> was upset by Japan&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=13530\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Aoi Ito<\/a> in a third-set tiebreaker, while No. 8 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=3785\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Emma Navarro<\/a> rolled past <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=1322\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Rebecca Marino<\/a> 6-1, 6-2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jul 29, 2025, 07:58 PM ET MONTREAL &#8212; Leylah Fernandez criticized the schedule at the National Bank Open&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-47516","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\/47516","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=47516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}