Trevisan defeats Osaka in Rouen; Mirra Andreeva advances

Martina Trevisan halted Naomi Osaka's return to clay at the first hurdle, knocking out the former World No.1 in the opening round of the Open Capfinances Rouen Métropole 6-4, 6-2.

Osaka, who returned from maternity leave in January and was competing as a wild card, had not played a clay-court match since Roland Garros 2022, where she lost in the first round to Amanda Anisimova. She has not won a match on clay since beating Anastasia Potapova in the first round of Madrid 2022.

By contrast, former No.18 Trevisan owns an impressive clay-court resume. She reached the Roland Garros quarterfinals in 2020 and the semifinals in 2022, and her sole Hologic WTA Tour title also came on clay at Rabat 2022. Trevisan also had a head start on her 2024 clay season: last week, she reached the quarterfinals of the Zaragoza ITF W100 event while Osaka was helping Japan defeat Kazakhstan in the Billie Jean King Cup Qualifiers on the indoor hard courts of Tokyo.

Trevisan will next face No.3 seed Anhelina Kalinina as she bids to reach her first quarterfinal since Hong Kong last October.

How the match was won: Trevisan has slumped to No.78 this year, and came into Rouen with just one tour-level win in eight matches in 2024. However, she was able to withstand Osaka's firepower and use her affinity for the surface to pull away in the first-time encounter.

After an opening exchange of breaks, it was Osaka who had the upper hand throughout most of the first set. She settled into a groove on serve, and seemed comfortable in the longer baseline exchanges as well. The four-time major champion repeatedly pressured Trevisan's delivery, bringing up two break points at 3-2 and three more at 4-3.

But Osaka was unable to convert as Trevisan clung on -- and at 4-4, the turning point arrived. An Osaka double fault presaged the Japanese player's forehand deserting her for the next two games; following a slew of errors on that side, Trevisan managed to snatch the set.

In the second set, the Italian went from strength to strength. She had found that certain patterns were especially effective against Osaka -- chiefly the redirected forehand down the line and the drop shot -- and repeatedly went back to them to tighten her grip of the match.

Mirra Andreeva reaches first tour-level clay quarterfinal: Second-round action also began in Rouen on Wednesday, with 16-year-old Mirra Andreeva defeating Elina Avanesyan 7-5, 6-4 to reach her second quarterfinal of 2024. The result also puts Andreeva into the quarterfinals of a tour-level event on clay for the first time.

The teenager had to battle hard to come out on top of a 1-hour, 41-minute contest. In both sets, sge repeatedly went up a break on Avanesyan, only for the valiant World No.67 to keep pegging her back.

Andreeva dazzled with her courtcraft at times, particularly a finely cut drop shot which she was able to pull off from the most unlikely of positions. However, Avanesyan's combination of rock-solid groundstrokes and sudden injections of pace down the line meant that almost every game was tightly contested.

Appropriately, though, Andreeva was eventually able to sneak over the line with a point that was very much in character: a combination of drop shot, lob and sharply angled forehand pass.

Andreeva will play either Trevisan or Kalinina as she bids to make her first tour-level semifinal.