Third seed Eugenie Bouchard of Canada and four-time champion Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark both suffered straight-sets upsets on Wednesday in the second round of the Connecticut Open.
Bouchard lost 6-2, 6-2 to Australia’s Samantha Stosur.
The Canadian world No. 8 played with her left thigh strapped after straining her hamstring in practice this week. The injury left her visibly struggling with her mobility throughout the match.
Photo: AFP
“It’s obviously not ideal — I’ve had to cut back a little bit on practice time, but I should be good to go pretty soon,” Bouchard said.
She said her personal trainer would join her in New York and said she does not expect the injury to have much impact on her performance at next week’s US Open.
Stosur, ranked No. 25 in the world, dominated the match, winning almost 70 percent of the points on her serve, while breaking Bouchard’s serve twice in each set.
Photo: AFP
“My serve is a weapon and sometimes it doesn’t act like that, so it’s important for me to really use that part of my game to my best advantage,” said Stosur, who will play in her first quarter-final since January.
Fourth seed Wozniacki was bested 6-4, 6-2 by Italy’s Camila Giorgi, who also beat Wozniacki at last year’s US Open.
The Italian player faced just two break points on Wednesday, when her first serves reached 188kph and her second hovered at about 172kph.
She consistently hit ground strokes at Wozniacki’s feet, preventing her from moving laterally. World No. 37 Giorgi broke Wozniacki’s serve in the first game of the match and twice in the second set.
“I think today the serve was the key and really consistent,” Giorgi said.
It was the earliest exit at the tournament for Wozniacki, who has appeared in New Haven seven times. She won her first four trips and lost in the semis in 2012 and last year.
Wozniacki is ranked No. 11 and was seeded fourth this year, but she has also been training to run the New York Marathon while keeping up a full tennis schedule. She said the cross-training has not been a problem, but acknowledged being tired on Wednesday.
“I haven’t had a day off basically since I came to Montreal, so I’ve been playing almost every day,” Wozniacki said. “The tank just wasn’t full today and when you play a player like that you just don’t get by with not moving 100 percent.”
Giorgi next faces Garbine Muguruza in the quarter-finals.
World No. 26 Muguruza needed three sets to dispatch qualifier Peng Shuai of China 6-2, 3-6, 6-3.
Muguruza dropped the first two games of the final set, but won the next five en route to the victory.
“I was nervous because I didn’t know what to do at that point, but I just said to myself: ‘Just continue, because she’s also going to get nervous, or she’s going to miss and not continue like this,’” Muguruza said.
Kirsten Flipkens of Belgium came from behind to beat Andrea Petkovic of Germany 4-6, 7-6 (7/4), 7-6 (8/6) in a match that lasted 3 hours, 11 minutes.
Petkovic served for the match twice in the second set at 5-4 and again at 6-5, but could not close out Flipkins.
Flipkins also had a tough time ending the match. She led 6-3 in the final tiebreaker, before winning on her fifth match point.
“I had to fight for it,” Flipkins said. “It was one of the best battles of my career.”
Just one seeded player, second seed Petra Kvitova, has advanced to the quarter-finals of the tournament. She won her second-round match on Tuesday and was due to face Barbora Zahlavova Strycova of the Czech Republic yesterday.
Alison Riske of the US was due to take on Magdalena Rybarikova of Slovakia in the other quarter-final.
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