Angelique Kerber failed in the first round of a tennis tournament for the third time in a row. The German number 1 lost her opening match at the Masters in Rome on Monday against the American Coco Gauff 1: 6 and 4: 6. For the 34-year-old number 19 in the world rankings, it was the fifth first-round defeat this year. Most recently, Kerber had skipped the Masters 1000 tournament in Madrid because of a cold. Before the start of the French Open in just under two weeks, the three-time Grand Slam tournament winner is far from her top form. In Stuttgart she had also failed in the first round, previously she had lost her two singles in the defeat with the German women’s team in Kazakhstan in the Billie Jean King Cup. The Kiel native has played ten matches since January, winning only two of them and losing all of the last seven. Kerber managed a break against Gauff right at the start, but after that she didn’t win a single game in the first set and seemed strangely listless in between. Overall, the one-sided game lasted just 70 minutes, during which time Gauff beat twice as many winners as Kerber.
