WHAT HAPPENED: Belinda Bencic, the No. 13 seed and one-time quarterfinalist at the US Open, cruised through her first-round match against veteran Mandy Minella, one of four mothers in the women's singles draw. Bencic survived a below-average serving day but otherwise looked sharp in the routine 6-3, 6-2 win.
Minella opened the match with a break and a hold, then Bencic rattled off six of the next seven games to win the first set, 6-3. Bencic made only 36 percent of her first serves, but Minella didn't take advantage of the bundle of second serves that came her way, winning only five of 16 of those points and creating only one break point in the set. Bencic sealed the set on her first chance with a blazing backhand down the line. The Swiss doubled her first-serve percentage in the second set and fended off the two break points she faced. She avoided her usual pitfalls, a tendency to double fault and lose concentration, for a clean stat sheet of 22 winners to 20 unforced errors and five aces to two double faults. Minella had nine winners and 19 errors.
Bencic is having her best year since 2015, when, as a teenager, she climbed to No. 8 in the world. After a successful junior career, she reached the quarterfinals of the 2014 US Open (still her best Grand Slam result) and then beat Serena Williams, at that time the No. 1 in the world, to win the 2015 Rogers Cup. Then a wrist injury sidelined Bencic for two years, and she fell out of the Top 300. Now 22, Bencic has finally regained her top form. She won the biggest title in four years in February at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, beating four top Top 10 opponents along the way. In Indian Wells, she took out defending champion Naomi Osaka and reached the semifinals. She leads the WTA in wins over both Top 5 and Top 10 opponents this year.
WHY IT MATTERS: The tennis world has been waiting for Bencic to re-enter the top echelon of women's tennis and start fulfilling the potential she has been known for since she was young. Once a student of Martina Hingis's mother, Melanie Molitor, Bencic looked poised to take over Hingis's mantle as a Swiss champion when she won the French Open Junior Championship and the Junior Championship at Wimbledon and became the top-ranked junior in the world at age 16. Now that Bencic is healthy, many believe she is capable of winning Grand Slams when her first-strike game is on. She will face a tougher test in the second round against veteran Alize Cornet, a player with enough variety to keep the ball out of Bencic's strike zone.
MATCH POINT: Bencic is on track to meet No. 1 Naomi Osaka in the fourth round. Given Bencic's win over Osaka in March, is she ready for her Grand Slam breakthrough?
