Day one of the 2018 Rogers Cup saw Venus Williams and Karolina Pliskova register straight set wins over their respective first round opponents while some of the other top seed players realised their opponents for round two.
Williams was stretched by Caroline Dolehide in the first set of her opening round match but came through 7-5, 6-1 to make it to the next round. The 13th seed will now take on the winner of the match between Monica Niculescu and Sorana Cirstea.
Ranked 124th in the world, Dolehide took an early 3-1 lead in the first set before Williams came back to reel off three games in a row. Serving to take the set into a tie-breaker, Dolehide was broken again and from there on, she won just one more game.
In another match, Pliskova defeated Katerina Siniakova 6-4, 6-4 and will now take on Kiki Bertens or Carol Zhao in her second round match while Julia Goerges came back from a set down to beat Timea Babos 3-6, 7-6 (3), 6-4. Goerges needed two and a half hours on court and 17 aces to overcome her opponent’s challenge.
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Goerges takes on Lucie Safarova in her second round match, who defeated Daria Gavrilova in three sets as well.
Estonian Anett Kontaveit was a three-set winner over Ekaterina Makarova, Anastasija Sevastova of Latvia dropped just one game against Aleksandra Krunic while Eugenie Bouchard got her campaign going with a doubles win with Sloane Stephens.
In the men’s section of the Rogers Masters, Benoit Paire was a straight-set winner over Jared Donaldson and will now face the top seeded Rafael Nadal in his second round match.
11th seeded Diego Schwartzman had no difficulties overcoming Kyle Edmund, winning 6-1, 6-2 in his opening round while Borna Coric beat local Vasek Pospisil 6-4, 6-3 to set up a meeting with Marin Cilic, a fellow Croat.
Also advancing to the second round was 12th seeded Pablo Carreno Busta, qualifier Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Fernando Versdasco, with the last of these names set to take on Grigor Dimitrov in their second round match.
Canadian wild-card entrant Peter Polansky gave his home fans something to cheer as he overcame Australia’s Matthew Ebden in their opener. Also advancing was Bradley Klahn who defeated David Ferrer in his opener and while he will now take on a tough opponent in second seeded Alexander Zverev, he also has something else to cheer about – Klahn has been awarded a wild-card for the US Open.
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