Second day of the WTA 1000 tournament in Montreal was headlined by Caroline Wozniacki, who played her first match after coming back from retirement. The former world's number one came back on court after being absent in the professional circuit for 3.5 years. The Dane started her resumed career from the match against the qualifier from Australia, Kimberly Birrell. It was a successful performance from the start for Wozniacki, who scored her the victory with a dominant score 6-2 6-2. Wozniacki was looking really competitive in terms of groundstrokes and backhand shots, which were her watermark once upon a time. The Dane was also more clinical in the key points, than her opponent who commited too many unforced errors to stay in contention in this match. Wozniacki gained 6 breaks while losing her own serve two times and scored 13 winners in compare to 15 unforced errors. Birrell has hit 3 more winners, but made as many as 32 winners at the same time.
Winning start for the new Grand Slam champ
Marketa Vondrousova sets up a hit clash against Caroline Wozniacki in second round. The Czech has debuted in a role of the Grand Slam champion and played her first match as a top 10 player as well. Vondrousova was a banker favorite against Mayar Sherif, but started the match quite slowly, as the Egyptian moved into lead after earning early break in second game. Within a time, Vondrousova started to step up her level and overplayed her opponent, who was overhitting quite a lot of shots, which was reflected in post-match stats, as Sherif commited 40 unforced errors in general. Vondrousova came back from being down in first set and won it by 6-4. The Czech was also dominant in the decisive moments of second set, as she won 4 games in a row since the score 2-2 and comfortably moved into second round.
The plague of injuries
Four players pulled out from the tournament between Monday and Tuesday due to the injury issues. Two of them have already win their first round's matches and did not show up on the court in second round, which resulted with walkovers. Madison Keys has suffered the hip injury during her first round's match against Venus Williams. The American got a medical out treatment and managed to close the match with a victory, but the injury prevented her from the on-court appearance in second round. In this case, Jasmine Paolini got awarded with an advance to round of 16. Simillarly, the match between Victoria Azarenka and Sloane Stephens did not came true, as Belarusian renewed some lingering injury.
Paula Badosa was expected to play an intriguing match against Beatriz Haddad Maia in first round. The Spaniard was suffering with health issues earlier in the season and faces another naggling injuries, which denies her playing for a weeks right now. The US Open appearance of Badosa is questionable in this case. The Brazilian played against Magdalena Frech instead and advanced into second round after straight sets win.
Lesia Tsurenko managed to climb through qualies field as a top seed, but needed to withdraw due to an injury before the match against Petra Martic. Cristina Bucsa replaced the Ukrainian, but did not show up well against Martic, who scored a comfortable 6-0 6-4 victory.
Title defence is on
Camila Giorgi won the last edition of the tournament in Montreal, which got played two years ago. Despite this, the Italian needed to play in qualies, but found her place in main draw after winning two matches in the weekend. The luck was still not on the side of Giorgi on paper, as she needed to start her main draw campaign from the match against the local crowd's favorite Bianca Andreescu. Giorgi did not discouraged herself though and showed a great performance, winning by 6-3 6-2. The Italian looked unplayable today and definitely capitalized on the match practice gained during the qualies. She sets up another hit clash against 7th seed Petra Kvitova in second round.
Referring to the injuries described above, Andreescu is the next one to join the field of players naggled by health issues. The Canadian revealed after the match, that she deals with a back pain since the last week's event in Washington, which did not help her to show the best performance during the match against Giorgi. Andresscu admitted, that she will probably miss the next WTA 1000 tournament in Cincinatti to focus on getting ready for US Open.
