After many years of world warming, the mountains surrounding Indian Wells had been perilously near turning into no-capped. However a latest chilly spell in California, and within the Coachella Valley, has restored them to correctly snow-capped – a welcome sight for all.
That great thing about the native topography was removed from Rebecca Marino’s thoughts when she confronted Marketa Vondrousova in a first-round match on Thursday in Stadium 4. The No. 75-ranked Marino had an 8-7 report for 2023 coming into the BNP Paribas Open and will simply have confronted numerous gamers much less succesful than the often-injured No. 105 Vondrousova, the 2019 Roland Garros finalist.
The match started with an odd symmetry – Vondrousova successful the primary and third factors with drop-shots and Marino responding every time with aces on the second and fourth factors.
However the back-and-forth responses ended two factors later when Marino dropped serve, hitting lengthy with a forehand method.
Issues continued in the same vein, with the 23-year-old Czech breaking once more within the third recreation to steer 3-0, and ultimately taking a 4-0 lead on her option to successful the opening set 6-2 in 35 minutes.
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Marino held to begin the second set however then misplaced her serve to path 2-1 and by no means actually recovered. The ultimate rating was 6-2, 6-2.
Vondrousova just isn’t a big-hitter however she is a lefty who locations the ball effectively and in addition possesses an efficient backhand slice. The slice on her serve to the advert court docket is lethal and the stats sheet exhibits that Marino, a redoubtable server herself, was not having it her manner on at the present time. Vondrousova ended up with 4 aces to her two – in addition to successful 86 per cent of first serve factors to her 61 per cent.
Full credit score to Vondrousova for a stable effort however Marino had an off-day, significantly together with her normally potent forehand, and can now try to regroup earlier than the Miami Open begins in two weeks.
In a night first-round doubles match in entrance of a full-house in Stadium 4, Félix Auger-Aliassime and Denis Shapovalov proved too good for the scratch pairing of American Ben Shelton and Holger Rune of Denmark, successful 6-1, 6-3.
The Canadians broke serve within the fourth and sixth video games of the opening set and usually performed with extra precision on the return in addition to on the internet. The second set was extra of the identical because the Canadian duo broke to 4-3, held serve and broke once more to shut out the match.
There was one dicey second for the Davis Cup champions within the fourth recreation of the second set when Shapovalov double-faulted twice however managed to battle again from love-40 (4 break factors) to win the no-ad scoring recreation.
Shelton, a fast-rising 19-year-old, struggled all through, lacking volleys and fatefully letting a Shapovalov forehand undergo the center on break level at 3-all – solely to look at because the ball landed in by three or 4 toes.
Within the second spherical Auger-Aliassime and Shapovalov will play Austrian Lucas Miedler and Cam Norrie of Nice Britain.
After Thursday’s match Shapovalov and Auger-Aliassime signed autographs and posed for selfies for courtside followers. Shapovalov left the court docket first whereas Auger-Aliassime hung round doing selfies and signed for an additional 10 minutes. That included getting surrounded (beneath) as he lastly exited the court docket space and commenced to go down an exit path on his option to the Stadium 1 locker room.
In a girls’s doubles first-round match, Leylah Fernandez mixed with American Taylor Townend for a 6-4, 7-6(5) victory over the Taiwanese pairing of Chan Latisha and Chan Hao-Ching.
The Canadian-American duo had the vociferous backing of the Stadium 6 crowd and rebounded from a 5-4 deficit to shut out the second-set tiebreak with Townsend scoring the ultimate two factors – a well timed poach on the internet after which an overhead put-away.
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“It was actually enjoyable,” stated Townsend, who ranks No. 20 in doubles and No. 123 in singles, in regards to the match. “It’s at all times robust generally when you’ve your first match and also you’ve by no means performed with one another. Everybody was fairly assured that we’d play effectively and I feel that it confirmed. They (Chan and Chan) are a very nice group. We’re trying ahead to Saturday.”
Concerning the mixture with Fernandez, the 26-year-old Townsend stated, “I feel our video games complement one another.” With somewhat snigger, she added, “we’re each lefties. You don’t see that usually, so I feel it’s an enormous benefit for us.”
Within the second spherical, Fernandez and Townsend will probably face prime seeds Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic.
On Friday, No. 25-seeded Shapovalov will make his singles debut, enjoying in opposition to No. 77-ranked Ugo Humbert. They are going to be third match in Stadium 4 following an 11 p.m. begin (2 p.m. ET Canada) with Shapovalov, 23, main the head-to-head with the 24-year-old Frenchman 3-1. His three wins have come on clay – Madrid 2022, Rome 2020 and Lyon 2019. Humbert prevailed of their solely hard-court match-up, in Auckland in 2020.
