Bencic advances in Charleston and Stephens says goodbye

The Swiss Belinda Bencic, tenth favorite of the WTA 500 tournament in Charleston, advanced to the second round on Tuesday while the American Sloane Stephensthirteenth favourite, fell to number 72, China’s Qinwen Zheng.

Bencic, who was a semi-finalist last week on the Miami cement, suffered the change of surface and, on the North Carolina clay, was on the ropes against China’s Wang Xiyu (n.143), but managed to come back from a set down and win 4-6, 7-6(5), 6-3.

The Swiss player will face off in the second round with the young Czech Linda Fruhvirtova, number 188 in the world.

The tournament lost Sloane Stephens, the 2017 US Open champion and now No. 36 in the world ranking, who surrendered to Zheng. after a battle of more than two hours and interrupted for about 35 minutes by rain.

He lost 6-3, 4-6 and 6-0 against a Zheng, who will face Russia’s Ekaterina Alexandrova in the second round.

The Czech also debuted this Tuesday Karolina Pliskova, but their meeting was interrupted and postponed to this Wednesday due to rain.

Pliskova, number 7 in the world, was losing 7-5 and 3-2 against the Ukrainian Katarina Zavatska.