MADRID \u2014 Canada’s Leylah Fernandez advanced to the quarterfinals of the Madrid Open with a straight-sets win over Ann Li on Monday.<\/p>\n
Fernandez, seeded 24th, defeated the 31st-seeded American 6-3, 6-2 in the women’s round of 16 of the clay-court tournament.<\/p>\n
Later, men’s third seed F\u00e9lix Auger-Aliassime of Montreal was upset 7-6 (3), 6-3 by Belgium’s Alexander Blockx in the men’s third round.<\/p>\n
Fernandez, from Laval, Que., converted 3 of 8 break-point chances in a match that lasted one hour, 23 minutes, firing six aces and winning 75.6 per cent of her first-serve points. Li failed to convert either of her two break opportunities.<\/p>\n
Fernandez is only the second Canadian to make it to the quarterfinals in Madrid. She also equalled her best career result at a WTA 1000 event after reaching the quarterfinals in Guadalajara in 2023 and Doha and Cincinnati in 2024.<\/p>\n
“We’ve been working hard,” Fernandez said. “To see the results coming in feels good, and the way that I’m doing it with calm and positivity, it’s the right way.”<\/p>\n
The Canadian will face ninth-seeded Mirra Andreeva of Russia in the quarterfinals. They split their previous two meetings, both coming in 2023.<\/p>\n
The match between Auger-Aliassime and Blockx featured just two break-point chances, with Auger-Aliassime missing a chance to go up 2-0 in the first set, and Blockx succeeding when getting the same opportunity in the second.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Auger-Aliassime, who came into Madrid with a career-high world ranking of No. 5, fell to 18-8 on the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADRID \u2014 Canada’s Leylah Fernandez advanced to the quarterfinals of the Madrid Open with a straight-sets win over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-609944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609944","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=609944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}