Top seeds Simona Halep, Karolina Pliskova and Elina Svitolina advanced to the third round at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia, while Victoria Azarenka won a blockbuster against Venus Williams, the only first-round match on Wednesday’s schedule. Our photographer Jimmie48 made it to most of today’s matches in Rome, but before showing you his photos, let’s first do a little recap.
Playing her first event back since the hiatus, Belinda Bencic fell to qualifier Danka Kovinic 6-3 6-1 in just 71 minutes. This is probably Kovinic’s biggest career victory, but the Montenegrin had actually defeated the Swiss in their only previous meeting, over five years ago at Charleston.