Tennis

Eugenie Bouchard upsets Zhang at Sydney International

Canadian Eugenie Bouchard captured her first match of the year by upsetting Shuai Zhang of China 7-6(1), 6-2 on Sunday in the first round of the Sydney International tennis tournament.

Canadian broke her opponent's serve 3 times in opening match

Eugenie Bouchard upset world No.23 Shuai Zhang in straight sets. (Peter Parks/Getty Images)

Canadian Eugenie Bouchard captured her first match of the year by upsetting Shuai Zhang of China 7-6(1), 6-2 on Sunday in the first round of the Sydney International tennis tournament.

Bouchard of Westmount, Que., broke her opponent three times and completed the match in one hour 39 minutes. The 22-year-old Canadian is ranked 46th in the world while Zhang is 23rd.

Bouchard also launched four aces in the match and was only broken once. She'll face either Slovakian Dominika Cibulkova or Laura Siegemund of Germany in the second round.

The Canadian was coming off a loss in the first round of the Brisbane International to American Shelby Rogers.

In other first-round action, two-time Grand Slam singles champion Svetlana Kuznetsova defeated Irina-Camelia Begu of Romania 6-1, 6-4. Defending champion Kuznetsova broke the Romanian's serve in the ninth game of the second set, then held serve to advance to the second round of the ATP-WTA tournament.

With files from The Canadian Press