On Tuesday, Canadian wild card entrant, Francoise Abanda ranked 272, pulled a surprise win over qualifier Saisai Zheng, ranked 66, in the first round at the Coupe Rogers in Montreal. The Canadian teenager egged on by the home crowd, defeated Zheng 6-1, 7-5 to progress to the second round of the Coupe Rogers. The match, which was originally scheduled for Monday, was postponed to the next day, owing to multiple rain delays. Zheng had qualified for the main draw after her straight set wins over Isabelle Boulais and Asia Muhammad.
Zheng's Statement
The Chinese, giving due credit to the Canadian teenager released a statement in her official twitter handle criticising the racquet stringing service offered by the tournament. She said that her racquets were lighter than her requirements and that the tournament had admitted their mistake. She had stated the following:
“I would like to congratulate Francoise on the victory well done this evening. And nothing to take away from her, I would like to mention the lack of professionalism from the stringing service at the Coupe Rogers. This is supposedly a top tier tennis tournament in which they admitted of the mistake in which both of my rackets came out 10lbs looser than requested.”
Abanda’s win over Zheng
In the first set, the Canadian saved six break points and broke Zheng twice to comfortably win it 6-1. She was leading 4-1 in the second set when the Chinese started fighting back. Zheng broke twice to level the set at 5-5, but the local girl eventually took the second set 7-5 and closed out the match in an hour and thirty-eight minutes, much to the delight of the fans. She will face the Ukranian, Elina Svitolina, in the next round.