By Canadian Press

Canadian tennis star Bianca Andreescu victorious in return to court

Apr 19, 2022 | 1:51 PM

STUTTGART, Germany — Canadian tennis star Bianca Andreescu was victorious in her return to action after a long layoff.

The 21-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., overcame some nervy moments in the first set en route to a 7-6 (5), 6-3 win over Germany’s Jule Niemeier on Tuesday in first-round action at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix.

Andreescu trailed 5-3 in the first set before rallying to win, then went up a break early in the second set en route to the victory.

The Canadian faced six break points, saving five of them. She converted three of her four break-point chances.

Andreescu, ranked 121st in the world due to a months-long absence, was given a wild-card berth into the tournament. She will next face third seed Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus.

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Tuesday’s match was the first of the 2022 season for Andreescu, who announced in December that she was stepping away from tennis to recover physically and mentally from a “challenging” two years.

Andreescu posted on Twitter that she was affected by “multiple weeks in isolation quarantining” after contracting COVID-19, and by her grandmother’s stay for several weeks in a hospital’s intensive care unit because of the coronavirus.

Her last match before Tuesday was a second-round loss to Anett Kontaveit at Indian Wells on Oct. 21.

“A lot of days, I did not feel like myself, especially while I was training and/or playing matches. I felt like I was carrying the world on my shoulders,” Andreescu said. “I could not detach myself from everything that was going on off the court; was feeling the collective sadness and turmoil around and it took its toll on me.”

Andreescu was 19 when she capped a breakthrough season by upsetting her idol, Serena Williams, in the 2019 U.S. Open final. That win came a couple of weeks after she won the Rogers Cup final in Toronto when Williams retired early in the final.

The strength of those wins propelled Andreescu to a career-best No. 4 in the WTA rankings. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 19, 2022.

The Canadian Press

Note to readers: This is a corrected item. A previous version had the incorrect score for the second set.