Canada's Eugenie Bouchard defeated Donna Vekic of Croatia 6-4, 1-6, 7-5 to advance to the next round at the Shenzhen Open in China.

Bouchard, who was once ranked as the world's No. 5 in October 20, 2014, has dropped to 49 in the current rankings, according to the International Tennis Federation.

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It has been over three months since Bouchard's last match. The win was her is the first since she suffered concussion in a locker room fall that knocked her out of a final major in 2015.

According to Sportinglife, the 21-year-old professional tennis player did not complete another match in 2015, pulling out of her attempted comeback in Beijing in October, and is suing the United States Tennis Association over the untoward incident.

"I'm so grateful and thankful to be able to be back on the court," Bouchard stated.  "It's been a while and I've really missed it, so I'm so happy."

In the other matches, tournament's second seed and current world's No. 6 Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic was forced to retire after losing the first set of her opening-round match 6-2 against the Chinese Zheng Saisai due to gastrointestinal illness.

The Czech tennis player hopes to be back and be able to compete in Sydney next week, stated: "I was very weak and dizzy and I felt like I was going to vomit. I couldn't really play though, I couldn't really move at all."

Bad weather meant the majority of matches were played indoors, but that was no hindrance to top seed and the current world's No. 5 Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland.

The Pole was the big winner at the end of 2015 when she triumphed at the WTA Finals, and she began 2016 in positive fashion with a 6-4 6-3 victory over the Serbian Aleksandra Krunic who ranks No.108 in the world.