Rogers Cup in La belle province: Le match de la journée
August 4, 2012 · Print This Article
by: Charles Blouin-Gascon
The best matches aren’t always the ones that are the tightest ones.
Canadians were treated to a free family weekend at the 2012 Rogers Cup, but that’s not all they received on Saturday. Françoise Abanda is only 15 years old but for 49 minutes on Saturday, she was all grown up. In the first round of the qualifying draw to the 2012 Rogers Cup, the young Canadian moved on with a dominant effort.
Abanda, who hails from Montreal, was one of eight Canadians in action on the opening day of the 2012 Rogers Cup. She was matched up against Poland’s Alicia Rosolska, but won in convincing fashion by the score of 6-1, 6-2. Abanda won 76 percent of her first-serves, and 57 percent of the second-serves–which are two good numbers. She also broke the serve of her Polish opponent four times and lost her own serve only once.
“I’m thrilled,” she says after her first-ever victory at the Rogers Cup. “I didn’t really know what to expect.
Abanda is a household name for the Canadian public after her strong showing at this year’s Ladies Wimbledon tournament where she made it to the semifinals in singles and doubles. A lot of hope rests on the shoulders of the young teenager, who for now hopes to make the most of this experience at the Rogers Cup. She says that, “This is a new and memorable experience for me, to be able to hang with the players of the top 40.”
Abanda says she admires the Williams sisters, but that she hasn’t modeled her style of play after anybody on the WTA Tour really. “Everyone has her own style,” she says.
Though Abanda performed admirably at Wimbledon–in her first Grand Slam event, mind you–her year hasn’t been perfect as a shoulder injury forced her into recovery. “It delayed my progression by a good six months,” she says. “But it’s still been a good year.”
It tends to be every time you become the youngest member of the junior Top 10.
In the second round of the qualifying tournament, she’s matched up against the 17th seeded Irina Falconi, from the United States. They’ve never faced each other, and Abanda isn’t sure what to expect. “I’ll just focus on my game and on my shots,” she says. “I’ll adapt if needed.”
And so will Falconi, perhaps.
Follow Charles Blouin-Gascon on Twitter @CeeeBG
[...] highlights include covering the 2012 Rogers Cup in Montreal, where I created the Rogers Cup in La belle province series and met and interviewed many of the top WTA players as well as future colleagues of mine–the [...]