Barty ditches Venus

Another round of upsets in second round matches at the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati.

Perhaps the biggest was Aussie qualifier Ash Barty dismissing 9th seed and Wimbledon finalist Venus Williams in three sets.

The first set saw Barty out ace Williams 6 to 2 and win the battle of second serve points won.  Both players protected themselves from break points, only facing one each.  But it was Barty who converted hers and that was sufficient to clinch the set 6-3.

Venus rebounded in set two, punishing the Barty first serve and gathering 5 break points.  The American broke twice and squared the match 3-6 6-2

Ash had enough of this and smashed Venus in the decider.

The underdog won all but two points on first serve, drew no break points but created 6 on the Venus delivery and converted 2.

30 points to 20 convinced Venus to leave Cincinnati and Ash to later play doubles and win that match with Casey Dellacqua.

America was more successful with Sloane Stephens who has been in form the last two weeks since her recent return to competitive tennis.  After first round losses to Riske (Wimbledon) and Halep (Washington), Sloane reached the quarters in Toronto (beaten by finalist Wozniacki}.

Now she has knocked off both Lucie Safarova and Petra Kvitova (14) to reach the Cincinnati round of sixteen.

Angie Kerber (1) has fallen back into her yearlong indifferent form, taken out in her first match (second round) by Ekaterina Makarova, although her loss this time was in a terrific match decided by a tie break won 13-11 by the Russian.

The winner last week in Montreal, Sascha Zverev, was surprisingly dumped from Cincinnati by 87th ranked American Frances Tiafoe 6-4 3-6 4-6.

Tiafoe won 66% of points on his serve, compared to Zverev 53%.

He returned won 47% of points on the German serve while Zverev could only manage 34%.

Other seeds leaving the tournament are:

Gilles Muller (16), losing to capable Albert Ramos-Vinolas 7-5 4-6 4-6

Sam Querrey (15), ousted by Adrian Mannarino 2-6 6-7 (4)

Jo-Wilfred Tsonga (8) lost the previous night to Ivo Karlovic 4-6 6-7 (9).