Genie Bouchard’s European clay-court debut a successful one in Portugal

Montreal's Genie Bouchard had few problems in her first match on the red clay of Europe.

After a tight first set, the 20-year-old, seeded No. 2 in the tournament, defeated Alisa Kleybanova 6-4, 6-1 to advance to the second round of the Portugal Open in Oeiras, outside Lisbon.

Kleybanova, a former top-20 player on the comeback trail after being struck with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, had been playing well.

Some of the WTA Tour players have been on the terre battue for a couple of weeks now, while Bouchard had Fed Cup duties on an indoor hard court in Montreal. But she showed Tuesday that she will be just as aggressive on the slower red clay as she was indoors.

She even had four aces in the match, which took just an hour and 13 minutes.

Bouchard will play veteran Yaroslava Shvedova, a big server from Kazakstan, in the second round.

The Canadian has a heavy clay-court schedule planned, with two of the top-tier WTA tournaments in Madrid and Rome coming in the next two weeks.

She said in Quebec City at ed Cup that she was looking forward to both of the those event – not only because she had never been able to play them before because her ranking wasn't high enough until this year, but because she had never been to either of those great cities.

Bouchard held an autograph session at the site Monday. But although she had originally been expected to take part in a public appearance with countryman Milos Raonic to visit Team Alvimedica, an American sailing crew preparing to take part in the challenging Volvo Ocean Race, it was detemined by Team Genie that she would only be doing on-site promotional activities, so she bowed out.

Raonic, who battled his admitted fear of heights to climb to the top of the mast of the offshore sailing vessel, was accompanied by Elena Vesnina of Russia instead.

Raonic, the No. 2 seed on the men's side, has a first-round bye in Portugal.

Another Canadian, Sharon Fichman, advanced to the second round of the doubles Tuesday with Polish partner Alicja Rosolska with a 6-4, 6-3 victory over Irina Buryachok of Ukraine and Vitalia Diatchenko of Russia.

Click here for more photos of Raonic and Bouchard from Portugal, and click here to keep up with what all the Canadians on tour are doing this week.