Throughout her career, Clara Tauson has enjoyed her greatest success on hard courts, and she will have ample opportunity to demonstrate this over the coming months.
However, things did not get off to a good start for the Dane when she opened the American tennis season—which features a series of major hardcourt tournaments in North America—with a first-round defeat at the Washington Open on Monday evening CET.
Tauson lost to Italy's Elisabetta Cocciaretto, ranked 71st in the world, by a score of 6-4, 6-7, 6-7 in a match that lasted over three hours.
Denmark's top female tennis player actually got off to a flying start, breaking her Italian opponent's serve in the opening game. With Cocciaretto never coming close to breaking back during the first set, Tauson was able to serve out the set, winning it 6-4.
The second set looked like a repeat of the first, as the Dane once again started by breaking serve in the opening game. However, Cocciaretto began to find her footing in Tauson's service games, while Tauson started committing more errors.
The Italian broke back to level the score at 3-3 and also held two set points in Tauson's serve at 6-5, in a game marred by double faults from the Dane. Tauson managed to force a tie-break and took a 2-0 lead, but Cocciaretto then won seven consecutive points to claim the set.
Cocciaretto maintained her momentum in the third set, breaking Tauson's serve to take a 2-1 lead.
Despite not playing at her best, Tauson managed to stay in the match. She broke back to make it 4-4 but was immediately broken again to fall behind 4-5, before managing to break Cocciaretto's serve once more. Tauson also took a 6-5 lead, but Cocciaretto managed to force the match into another tie-break.
At this point, Tauson ran out of steam; she committed a number errors and lost the tie-break 2–7, thereby losing the match.
The WTA 500 Washington Open serves as a warm-up event for two major WTA 1000 tournaments in North America, ahead of the US Open Grand Slam, which begins in late August.