Mississauga’s Andreescu ousted from French Open singles play, continues in doubles action

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Published June 6, 2023 at 10:58 am

Lesia Tsurenko has become a thorn in the side of Mississauga’s Bianca Andreescu.

Twice, now, in the last three months, the 33-year-old Ukrainian has put a sudden and disheartening stop to an Andreescu run at an overseas tennis tournament.

And she’s done so while slotted significantly lower in Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) rankings than the 22-year-old Canadian, who continues her struggle to jump back into the tennis elite of which she was a member for a time after her stunning U.S. Open win in 2019.

The latest setback for Andreescu (WTA No. 42) came in third-round action at the French Open in Paris this past Saturday where she fell in convincing fashion 1-6, 1-6 to Tsurenko, ranked No. 66 in the world.

Andreescu had never before reached the third round at the Grand Slam tourney in Parish, so that’s the silver lining in an otherwise disappointing result.

In February of this year, the Mississauga native, ranked No. 36 at the time and the top seed at the Thailand Open, suffered a similar fate at the hands of her Ukrainian opponent.

Seemingly well positioned to earn her first tournament win since returning to the game from a self-imposed hiatus (she missed all of 2021), Andreescu went down to defeat in the semi-finals at the hands of Tsurenko, who was ranked No. 100 at that time.

Meanwhile, the Canadian tennis star isn’t done this week in Paris yet. She’s competing in mixed doubles play.

Andreescu teams up with New Zealand’s Michael Venus to take on the seventh-seeded tandem of Marcelo Arevalo (El Salvador) and Marta Kostyuk (Ukraine) later this morning (June 6).

Andreescu/Venus defeated the pair of Kevin Krawietz (Germany) and Nicole Melichar-Martinez (United States) 2-6, 6-1, 10-8 last Friday.

Andreescu is still recovering from two torn ligaments in her ankle suffered March 27 at the Miami Open.

She returned to action on April 28 at the Madrid Open in Spain just about a month after going down with the injury.

The ankle injury suffered during fourth-round action at the Miami Open did, at least temporarily, put the brakes on Andreescu’s journey back to what she hopes will be a place once again among the women’s tennis elite.

She had been showing recent signs of getting back into the top form that earned her the U.S. Open win in 2019. She had climbed to No. 31 in WTA singles rankings prior to the Miami tournament, and then climbed briefly to No. 27.

That latter ranking is Andreescu’s highest since returning to the game after a lengthy layoff in which she didn’t compete at all in 2021.

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