NEW YORK (Reuters) – Caroline Garcia’s hopes of making another deep run at the U.S. Open came to a quick end as the French seventh seed suffered a shock 6-4 6-1 first round loss to Chinese qualifier Yafan Wang on Tuesday.
Garcia, a semi-finalist at Flushing Meadows last year who went on to claim the biggest title of her career two months later at the WTA Finals, was undone by 34 unforced errors against world number 114 Wang.
With the loss, Garcia will fall from the top 10 of the rankings to outside the top 20.
Wang, a former world number 47 who missed seven months of action in 2022 and was ranked 696th in March, has a 57-10 across all levels this year, including titles in five ITF events and the WTA 125 tournament in Stanford two weeks ago.
(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
