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Coming off her win at the D.C. Open, Leylah Fernandez was hoping to have a little more time to prepare for her first-round match back home at the National Bank Open presented by Rogers.
But she was forced to open play just a little over 24 hours after she returned to Montreal after her triumph in Washington, facing off against Australia’s Maya Joint in Tuesday’s morning session.
Fernandez and Joint played in the final time slot of first-round matchups, as the second round began during the evening session.
“WTA protocols mean first-round matches need to be completed before second-round matches are played, ensuring fairness to all players involved,” Tennis Canada said in a statement. “Given Leylah won the title in Washington on Sunday, she was not able to arrive in Montreal until the early hours of Monday morning. As a result, the WTA made the decision to play her opening match in the latest possible first-round slot.”
Fernandez ultimately lost to Joint in straight sets (6-4, 6-1), showing clear signs of fatigue in the defeat.
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Ranked as the No. 45 singles player by the WTA, Joint won the match over the 24th-ranked Fernandez in 75 minutes.
With the match finished, Fernandez told reporters that she had been given promises that she would be able to play her first-round match Tuesday night.
“I did not receive that,” she said. “That hurt me because I was very looking forward to be playing at night, but I guess it’s a little bit political issues at that point.”
Fernandez said that she and her team found out that she wouldn’t get the exception to play at night ahead of the D.C. Open final.
“The sleep schedule was kind of out of whack, so it was a little hard to recuperate as much as possible,” she told Sportsnet’s Danielle Michaud.
Fernandez returned home from the U.S. around 2 a.m. on Monday and had to be at an event for her foundation for 8 a.m. that morning, taking away from her prep for the tournament.
The National Bank Open tournament director in Montreal, Valérie Tétreault, said that she “didn’t win her fight” to get Fernandez’s match pushed back to Tuesday’s evening session, citing the WTA protocols as the reason why they couldn’t fit the Lavel, Que. native into a later slot.
With the D.C. Open final — a WTA 500 event — and the WTA 1000 National Bank Open’s main draw taking place on the same day, Tétreault said that type of crossover isn’t supposed to happen.
“The calendar is supposed to be made so that the 1000-level tournaments are prioritized over a WTA 500, so we’ll have to go back to the drawing table,” she said.
— With files from the Canadian Press