Bianca Andreescu is back exactly one month after a horrific injury and she experienced another disappointment at the 2023 Madrid Open.
Some injuries are worse than they look and then others look worse than they are in reality. And although Andreescu's injury which she picked up at the Miami Open shouldn't be taken lightly, the Canadian is surely happy that she returned to competitive action already after one month.
The 2019 US Open champion was forced to miss the Billie Jean King Cup action, but she used the facilities to return to practice and watched her compatriot Leylah Fernandez as she sent Canada into the Finals.
Since Andreescu's career was plagued by injuries also before, she competed in Madrid only once before. That was last year when she defeated Alison Riske and Danielle Collins, before losing to Jessica Pegula in a third consecutive match against an American at last year's WTA 1000 event.
Marking only her second appearance at the event, the 22-year-old took on Xiyu Wang from China, who is also 22. The two met once before, but it wasn't on the WTA Tour as they clashed in the Girls' Roland Garros event in 2017 in a match that was won by then third-seeded Canadian.
Now, once again Andreescu was the seeded player, with number 23 next to her name, and even though she was coming back from an injury, she showed her qualities early on. The Canadian was solid on her serve in the first set and she managed to cause damage also on return.
After two breaks of her opponent's serve, the former world no. 4 won the first set 6-3. She managed to keep the good streak going also in the second, creating a 3-0 lead early on. But one bad service game meant that the score was soon even at three games all.
But Andreescu then managed to hold in an important game to stop the emerging comeback and the second set had to be eventually decided in a tie-break. However, Wang proved to be a batter player in the tie-break, winning it 7-5 and forcing a decider.
And even though Andreescu had the match victory on her fingertips in the second set, she had to re-energize for the third set, and it certainly wasn't easy. Right after the opening three games, the few fans who stayed to watch the match well past midnight saw what were arguably the two most important games of the match.
First, Wang had 2 chances to break her opponent in the fourth game and then, in the longest game of the match, Andreescu couldn't use her 3 break points.
This ultimately cost her the match, as her Chinese opponent used one of the two break points she had in the following game, and after one more break, she was able to defeat the former Grand Slam champion 3-6, 7-6(5), 6-2 to set up a third-round clash with another major winner, the 11th-seeded Barbora Krejcikova from the Czech Republic.
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