No. 2 seed Simona Halep of Romania earned a 6-1, 6-4 win in 78 minutes over Ukraine’s Lesia Tsurenko on Monday in the first round of the Rothesay Classic Birmingham in Birmingham, England.
Halep saved six of eight break points and served up four aces to notch her first grass-court victory since winning the 2019 Wimbledon title. She missed the grass-court season last year while nursing a calf injury.
American Lauren Davis pulled out a 7-6 (2), 7-6 (5) victory over Kaja Juvan of Slovenia in an hour and 58 minutes. Elena-Gabriela Ruse of Romania had a similar day, needing two hours and one minute to overcome China’s Qiang Wang 7-6 (6), 7-6 (12).
Other winners included Caroline Garcia of France, Donna Vekic of Croatia, Harriet Dart of Great Britain and Aleksandra Krunic of Serbia.
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Fourth seed Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic bounced back from a narrow first-set loss to defeat Kaia Kanepi of Estonia 6-7 (5), 6-0, 6-0 in the first round in Berlin.
No. 6 seed Daria Kasatkina of Russia also had to rally, eventually beating Ukraine’s Anhelina Kalinina 5-7, 6-3, 6-1.
Canadian Bianca Andreescu took down Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic 6-4, 4-6, 6-4. Andreescu earned an edge by converting seven of 11 break-point opportunities while saving seven of 13.
Aliaksandra Sasnovich of Belarus, Daria Saville of Australia and Xinyu Wang of China also advanced, each winning in three sets.
–Field Level Media