The order of play is out for Tuesday at the 2017 Citi Open. The day of action from Washington will include the tournament's top seed in the women's singles draw in Simona Halep. She'll face a tough American opponent and the same can be said about Canada's Eugenie Bouchard. The Canadian is currently scheduled to play in the last match of the day on Grandstand 1 against the USA's Christina Mchale.
Bouchard vs. McHale preview
The first-round meeting between Bouchard and McHale represents a first-time meeting between the two players. Bouchard enters the match as the current World No.
73 while McHale is currently ranked 61st in the world. Neither of these two players is in good form at the moment as they each have struggled over the last few months.
Bouchard enters the match with just one win in her last four tournaments. She hasn't played since Wimbledon 2017's first round, a match that she lost to Spaniard Carla Suarez-Navarro about a month ago. Bouchard also has recent losses to Barbora Strycova and Francesca Schiavone. Furthermore, the Canadian also lost a match this season to Victoria Duval, an American player ranked 896th at the time of their match. To find a time when Bouchard beat someone of McHale's ranking or higher on the hard-court surface, you have to go back to the early stages of this season, when Bouchard beat Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the Sydney draw.
McHale's grass-court season was definitely one for the American to forget. She won a match at Wimbledon, but it was only against a player ranked outside of the top 200 on tour. For the last few months, she has consistently gone out in the first or second round in tour events. The last time she did anything of note was back at Acapulco, a tournament where she made the semifinals.
That event stands out as practically the only highlight of her season and it is not a bright one.
Big names, not big tennis
The Bouchard/McHale first-round match takes on significance, not because these are top players on tour, but because of their identities. Bouchard is one of the most-marketed athletes in female tennis while McHale is significant in the Washington draw, because of her American nationality.
One of these players will be left over following Tuesday's scheduled action with a chance for further damage at the Citi Open. This should be a late match from Washington, as it's the final one scheduled for Grandstand 1. Two ATP matches will be played to open the evening session with McHale and Bouchard to follow those.
