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Eugenie Bouchard and Simona Halep Lose in the First Round of Wimbledon

By Jacob Street
Published on: 05:49 PST, Jun 30, 2015

Wimbledon has been filled with crazy matches and many upsets, and we’re still in the first round. Both Simona Halep and Eugenie Bouchard were ousted in their first round match-ups at the All England Club.

Last year’s Wimbledon runner-up, Eugenie Bouchard, lost her opening round match to a Chinese qualifier named Duan Ying-Ying. Bouchard fell in straight sets and seemed to lose all confidence after losing the first round tiebreak by a score of 7-3.

The 21-year-old Canadian’s loss at Wimbledon is just another in a long losing streak. At one point earlier this year, Bouchard had lost 10 of 11 matches. Bouchard was knocked out in the first round of the French Open as well.

Bouchard looked practically unstoppable in the majors last year. She made it to the semi-finals in the first three and lost to Petra Kvitova in the final of last year’s Wimbledon.

Bouchard, who was ranked 12th in the world and 12th in the tournament, will fall out of the top-20 in the WTA rankings with this latest defeat and may even fall out of the top-25 depending on how other top players fare in London.

Eugenie Bouchard’s biggest downfall at Wimbledon Tuesday was her serving. She hit 10 double faults over the course of two sets while Duan won 80 percent of the points on her first serve. While Bouchard hit more winners by a margin of 9 to 12, she also outpaced Duan in unforced errors, hitting 23 compared to Duan’s 15.

Let’s not discount the play of Duan, who is known as the Chinese Lindsay Davenport due to her height (6’1). She hit toe-to-toe from the baseline for the majority of the match with Eugenie at Wimbledon

One of last year’s Wimbledon semi-finalist, Simona Halep, lost her opening round match to Jana Cepelova. Jena, who is ranked 106th in the world, beat world no.1 Serena Williams last year at the WTA event in Charleston, South Carolina.

The third-seeded Romanian, who reached the final at the French Open last year, struggled on her serve throughout the match and made 34 unforced errors as she fell Cepelova 5-7 6-4 6-3.

While Halep played far from her best, credit must be given to Jana Cepelova, who played her heart out, and came back from 0-40 in the final game to win the match.

Halep, like Bouchard, fell early at the French Open as well, losing to Mirjana Lucic-Baroni in the second-round.

Not a single player seems to be safe at this year’s Wimbledon, which makes for very exciting tennis!

[Image credit: Wimbledon]

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