Former world No. 5 Eugenie Bouchard’s struggles continued on Thursday at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California, where she fell in the first round to Germany’s Annika Beck.
Beck made the most of Bouchard’s errors to dispatch the Canadian 3-6, 6-2, 6-2.
Although it was her second first-round exit in as many tournaments since her third-round defeat at the Australian Open, Bouchard said she was encouraged to be playing pain free after battling an abdominal injury after Melbourne.
Photo: AFP
“I didn’t have a good serving day today, but I did have a pain-free serving day today, so that was really good,” said the 23-year-old, who shot to stardom with her run to the Wimbledon final in 2014.
Now that she is able to train at 100 percent, Bouchard said she hopes she can get her season on track and improve on her ranking of No. 53.
“I feel like it is now at 100 percent for sure, it has for a couple of weeks, but as soon as you start training 100 percent it doesn’t translate automatically,” she said. “You still need weeks and weeks of that to feel like normal.”
Andrea Petkovic booked an all-German clash with second seed Angelique Kerber and she was hoping some inside knowledge would help her get past her Olympic teammate and friend.
Petkovic was leading Vania King 6-0, 2-0 when the American retired from their first-round match with an ankle injury.
“That’s definitely not how I want to win a match, but up until then I was actually happy with my performance,” Petkovic said.
She will need to be at the top of her game to get past Kerber, who has won seven of their 10 prior meetings.
“We played doubles at the Olympic Games last year — we even shared a room last year in Brazil,” Petkovic said. “I know how she breathes at night, even. I hope I can use that against her in the next match.”
In the first round of the women’s doubles, Kateryna Bondarenko of Ukraine and Chan Hao-ching of Taiwan rallied from a set down to edge Laura Siegemund of Germany and Elina Svitolina of Ukraine 5-7, 7-6 (7/5), 10-4 in 1 hour, 56 minutes.
Bondarenko and Chan converted five of 12 break points to set up a second-round clash with Lara Arruabarrena of Spain and Liang Chen of China.
In the first round of the men’s singles, Taiwan’s Lu Yen-hsun fell in a 6-7 (6-8), 6-4, 6-3 defeat to Canadian qualifier Vasek Pospisil in 2 hours, 29 minutes.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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