Bianca Andreescu’s run at the Italian Open tennis tournament came to an end Monday with a 7-5, 6-1 loss to Qinwen Zhang in the fourth round.
Andreescu, from Mississauga, Ont., looked poised to continue her impressive run at the WTA 1000 clay-court event as she served for the win in the first set in Rome.
But Zheng, the eighth seed from China, saved set point before completing her fourth break of the set, then closed out on serve.
That momentum carried over as Zhang scored two more breaks in a dominant second set.
Zhang overcame eight double faults and a 47.1-per-cent accuracy on first serve to win in 93 minutes.
Despite the loss, the tournament was a success for the 24-year-old Andreescu, who returned to action earlier this year after nearly six months off to focus on her health.
The former world No. 4 and 2019 U.S. Open champion posted wins over 20th-seed Dora Vekic and 11th-seed Elena Rybakina in Rome and is projected to jump 21 points to No. 100 in the WTA rankings.
Also Monday, the top-seeded women’s doubles team of Ottawa’s Gabriela Dabrowski and Erin Routliffe of New Zealand advanced to the quarterfinals with a walkover against Peyton Stearns of the United States and Australia’s Daria Kasatkina.
Stearns and Kasatkina withdrew after Stearns posted a 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (4) win over Naomi Osaka in singles action earlier Monday. The win took two hours 41 minutes to complete.
Dabrowski and Routliffe will next face the winner of Tuesday’s match between sixth-seeded Russians Diana Shnaider and Mirra Andreeva versus Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Mexico’s Giuliana Olmos.