Unseeded Cornet upsets Wimbledon champ Kerber at Rogers Cup

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MONTREAL (AP) — Alize Cornet of France defeated listless-looking Wimbledon champion Angelique Kerber 6-4, 6-1 in the second round of the Rogers Cup on Wednesday.

The unseeded Cornet advanced to a third-round meeting with 15th-seeded Ashleigh Barty of Australia, who beat Belgian Alison Van Uytvanck 7-6 (7) 6-2.

Kerber leads her all-time series with Cornet 3-2, but the Frenchwoman has won both of their meetings on hard courts. Cornet’s last win over a player ranked in the top 5 in the world was also a hard-court win over Kerber in Beijing in 2017.

Kerber, from Germany, led the WTA Tour in hard-court wins this year with 21, but she wilted in the sticky heat at IGA Stadium in her first match since her Wimbledon triumph.

“It is one match, I know I have to learn from it,” said the fourth-seeded Kerber. “I took a few weeks off after Wimbledon so I knew I had to come here, play a lot of matches, and also to get used to the hard courts again.

“Of course, it was not the plan to play just one match, but at the end, this is tennis. Every tournament starts from zero. Now I’ll try to get ready for the next tournament.”

Maria Sharapova continued her bid to climb back to the top of women’s tennis with a 6-0, 6-2 victory over 12th-seeded Daria Kasatkina. Sharapova, the former world No. 1 who was ranked 149th a year ago after serving a 15-month doping ban, got a second one-sided win in a row.

The Russian will face fifth-seeded Caroline Garcia of France in the third round. Sharapova is 4-1 in previous meetings, but Garcia won their last one this year in Stuttgart.

Unseeded Kiki Bertens is ranked 18th in the world, so it wasn’t much of an upset when she beat ninth-seeded Karolina Pliskova 6-2, 6-2 to advance to a third-round matchup with eighth-seeded Petra Kvitova.

The top eight seeds had gotten a bye to the second round.

Qualifier Carla Suarez Navarro of Spain, a former top-10 player, got past Lesia Tsurenko 6-4, 3-2 when her Ukrainian opponent retired in the second set.

Francoise Abanda is to face American Sloane Stevens later Wednesday on what is forecast to be a rainy day.

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