Charleston: Friday Highlights
Highlights from quarterfinal action at the Volvo Car Open.
Highlights from quarterfinal action at the Volvo Car Open.
SINGAPORE – In 2016, Madison Keys has continued her upward career trajectory, reaching the second week of all four majors and establishing herself in the Top 10. Next stop: Singapore.
1. Dazzling Debut.
Madison Keys is making her debut at BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore presented by SC Global.
2. Peak Performance.
It is the culmination of a career-best season. She broke into the WTA Top 10 in June, becoming the first American to enter the elite ranking bracket since Serena Williams in 1999.
3. Hitting the Heights.
After a wonderful Asian Swing, Keys reached a career-high ranking of World No.7 on Monday, October 10 following her run to the semifinals at the China Open.
4. Tremendous on Tour.
It all follows terrific achievements on tour: a second WTA title, at the Aegon Classic Birmingham, runner-up slots at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia and Rogers Cup, plus quarterfinals at the Miami Open and Dongfeng Motor Wuhan Open.
5. Amazing Americans.
Keys is flying the flag for the USA at the pinnacle of women’s tennis – along with the Williams sisters. All three of them were top ten seeds at Wimbledon this year: the first time there had been three American women seeded at a Slam since the 2005 US Open. When she played Serena in Rome, it was the first all-American final there since 1970, and the first all-American clay-court WTA final since Roland Garros in 2002.
6. Slam Success.
She was one of just four players to reach the round of 16 at all of the Grand Slams this year – showing she is really getting to grips with the big occasions.
7. Going the Distance.
She’s also dramatically improved her record in matches that go the distance – in 2016 she’s 17-6 in three-setters. That’s a marked contrast to her record in 2015 (7-8) and 2014 (6-10).
8. Tying it Up.
Keys currently boasts an impressive 2016 track record in tie-breaks – winning 14 of them.
9. On the Climb.
Keys has been on a sharp upward trajectory – 2015 was her first season in the WTA Top 20 rankings. The two years previously had seen her in the top 40 – with 2014 including a win at Eastbourne.
10. Teenage Dream.
21-year-old Keys has been on the circuit since she was a teenager. In 2009 she played her first WTA event as a wildcard at Ponte Vedra Beach, reaching the second round, and in the process becoming the seventh-youngest player ever to win a WTA match at the age of 14 years and 48 days, beating Alla Kudryavtseva.
Annika Beck battled back from a set down to oust Eugenie Bouchard from the BNP Paribas Open and book a second-round clash with Kristina Mladenovic.
An interview with Elena Vesnina after her win in the semifinal of the Volvo Car Open.
INDIAN WELLS, CA, USA – Kristina Mladenovic is happy to have found a new doubles partner in the highly experienced Russian grand slam champion, Svetlana Kuznetsova.
It was something of a shock when Mladenovic announced that she and Caroline Garcia were putting an end to their doubles ambitions for the foreseeable future.
Mladenovic and Kuznetsova got their partnership off to the best of starts at the BNP Paribas Open, defeating Anna-Lena Groenefeld and Kveta Peschke 6-4, 6-1. They next face Andrea Hlavackova and Peng Shuai in the second round.
Svetlana and Kiki all happy and such.
They're moving on here in the desert. ?? pic.twitter.com/n6fxTc30EA— Christopher Levy (@tennis_shots) March 9, 2017
The French pairing of Mladenovic and Garcia enjoyed no shortage of doubles success, winning the French Open in 2016 as well as being runners-up at the US Open later in the same year.
Highlights from the semifinals action at the Volvo Car Open.
INDIAN WELLS, CA, USA – Reigning French Open champion Garbiñe Muguruza came through a tense finish against Kirsten Flipkens, 6-2, 6-3, in her opening round match at the BNP Paribas Open. Up next for the No.7 seed is 17-year-old Kayla Day, who stunned Australian Open semifinalist Mirjana Lucic-Baroni in three sets.
“I think it was a difficult match,” she said during her post-match press conference. “I think she’s very talented and she can hit some critical shots and she can be tricky. I’m happy because it was not a first, easy match, like a first round. I don’t know. It was a big win for me, actually.”
Muguruza had split her first four meetings with the 2013 Wimbledon semifinalist, losing both of their meetings on grass. But hardcourts have proved more fertile ground for the Spaniard, who won her third straight match against her rival on concrete after 90 minutes on court.
.@GarbiMuguruza makes a flying start against Flipkens! #BNPPO17 pic.twitter.com/6H7n5UdXfv
— WTA (@WTA) March 10, 2017
“I think grass is a very tricky surface; you never know what’s gonna happen,” the 2015 Wimbledon runner-up said during her on-court interview. “I just played my game; sometimes she plays better, sometimes I do – that’s what tennis is! – but I played better today.”
Racing out to a set and 5-0 lead, things got more complicated from there as Flipkens forced her way into the second set. Ultimately, Muguruza broke through for the sixth and final time in the match, striking 24 winners to 28 unforced errors, and came to the net an impressive 33 times – winning 21 of those points.
.@GarbiMuguruza at her very best! #BNPPO17 pic.twitter.com/qLGNiLERle
— WTA (@WTA) March 10, 2017
“It’s always difficult to close out your first match. She’s a very talented player, unbelievable, with a very different game. I got nervous!”
Muguruza is making her fifth appearance in Indian Wells, and hopes to make the quarterfinals; her previous result came on her 2013 debut, when she reached the fourth round as a qualifier.
.@GarbiMuguruza picks up 10th win of 2017!
Downs Flipkens 6-2, 6-3! #BNPPO17 pic.twitter.com/sEqGkQHwFk
— WTA (@WTA) March 10, 2017
“I never know my expectations for the tournament. I believe every time I play the tournament I see myself holding a trophy, for sure. I want to believe I’m one of these women that can win the tournament.
“After that, I could lose in third round. I just want to go out there, my next match, and try to play well, try to do my game.”
What a win for the 17 year old!!@kaylaeday upsets Lucic-Baroni 6-4, 5-7, 7-5! #BNPPO17 pic.twitter.com/HQWlw3JoxY
— WTA (@WTA) March 10, 2017
Standing between her and a second round of 16 run is Day, the American teenager who survived No.32 seed Lucic-Baroni, 6-4, 5-7, 7-5.
“This means a lot to me,” Day told press. “I was really grateful to get offered this wildcard into the tournament, and it really means a lot that I can be able to see that I can play with some of the best players in the world.”
Lucic-Baroni retired from her last tournament due to a GI illness, but nonetheless served for the match in the final set.
“It was a really close match throughout the entire match. I think I started to really believe I could win at 6-5 in the third. It was still a really tough game, because I was a little bit tight to close it out. But my serve had been giving her a lot of problems, so I knew if I stuck to my game it might work out.”
Day turned heads last summer when she took home her first Grand Slam title at the US Open girl’s singles event, and withstood the Croat’s firepower to win the final four games of the match and book a meeting with Muguruza.
“She’s such a great player. I’m really excited to go out there and play her, one of the greatest in the game right now, so it should be really fun and a great experience for me.”
INDIAN WELLS, CA, USA – Kayla Day has a beaming smile, one of those smiles which lights up a face, and while this week in the desert has given her plenty to smile about, it seems that she’s the kind of person who doesn’t need many excuses to crack out a grin.
When asked to describe herself in one word she chooses “hilarious”. The 17-year-old admits to being “pretty funny, I’m serious sometimes but I like to crack jokes a lot and laugh.” She clearly enjoys life and with the kind of impressive talent that saw her take out No. 32 seed Mirjana Lucic-Baroni on her way to the third round at the BNP Paribas Open, there is plenty to be happy about.
The California native first picked up a racket at the age of seven after watching her mom play in a women’s interclub match. She thought tennis looked ‘fun’ and subsequently signed up for a week’s tennis camp, loving it so much she ended up playing ‘every day all summer’ before locking in to regular lessons in her hometown of Santa Barbara.
A few years later she started making the four-hour round trip to Carson twice a week with her mom and she still trains there today under the watchful eye of Henner Nehles.
“My dream was always to be a professional but I really started thinking about it when I was 15,” said Day, who won the first Grand Slam match she played when she defeated Madison Brengle at last year’s US Open. That victory set up a second round meeting with Madison Keys on Louis Armstrong Stadium.
“It was such a good experience. I mean, I got two matches,” said the lefthander. “I got to play one of the great American players right now, Madison Keys. And I got to play on such a big court, and that was the first time I had ever been on such a big court.”
It was quite a fortnight for Day who claimed her first Junior Grand Slam title at the same event and also finished as runner-up in the girls’ doubles competition with Caroline Dolehide. Her junior successes ensured she ascended to World No. 1 in the junior rankings – a position she hopes to hold one day in the senior ranks, although she is having to practice the art of patience in the pursuit of her career dreams.
“I want my results to come, like, now. I want everything to be as fast as possible,” she admitted. “I think my coach is really good about telling me, like, focus on the process and improving and the results will come.”
Day is bubbly and confident and seems to be taking her success in her stride. She certainly doesn’t struggle for motivation either, divulging she was almost too psyched for her meeting with Lucic-Baroni.
“Before a match I either go Maroon 5 mellow or really pump out Kanye West or Jay Z,” she revealed. “Before I got in the car [to go to the courts] I was all pumped up and then I got in the car and I was like, man, I’m a little too pumped up, maybe I should mellow it down so I went Maroon 5 right before I went out there.”
As well as enjoying music, Day is a big fan of Stephen King novels and Netflix series like Grey’s Anatomy and The Vampire Diaries. Her non-tennis talents include speaking fluent Czech, thanks to her mom who was born and raised in the Czech Republic, and making a good butternut squash soup.
– Photos courtesy of Getty Images
Venus Williams rallied back from a set down and fought off three match points to emerge victorious against Jelena Jankovic and move into the third round of the BNP Paribas Open.
INDIAN WELLS, CA, USA – No.3 seed Karolina Pliskova showed signs of improvement after her tough opening round win, easing past No.29 seed Irina-Camelia Begu, 6-4, 7-6(2) to reach the fourth round at the BNP Paribas Open for a third straight year.
“There were some ups and downs,” she said after the match. “I had 13 break points or however many in the first set, which took an hour, so it was quite difficult. I was feeling comfortable on serve, even though my first serve wasn’t great. I was up 3-1 in the second and took a little bit of a timeout and played a terrible few games.
“She improved and started swinging more aggressively. I was getting pushed back but I still believed, and started stepping into the court at the end. It could have been a third set there.”
Pliskova flirted with defeat against Monica Puig on Friday, falling behind a set and trailing 0-3 in the decider, but faced far fewer problems against Begu, who’d won their only previous encounter back in 2011.
“There’s some pressure for everyone; what I’ve experienced is that there’s a little more pressure on me now that I’m such a high seed. Everyone is expecting good tennis and good results from high seeds, so it’s always surprising if you lose first or second round. That’s been different.”
Amazing touch on the stretch from @KaPliskova! ? #BNPPO17 pic.twitter.com/ro9fEwXRFv
— WTA (@WTA) March 13, 2017
Far improved from those early days on tour, the US Open runner-up struck 21 winners over the course of two sets and maintained a +3 differential for the match – hitting just four unforced errors in the first set alone.
“During the year, there’s two tournaments where I feel like I’m really playing well. The rest, I feel more in the middle, where I’m not playing bad, but I can still win matches not playing great. One match will be bad, the next will be better, so I’m trying to find a balance where I’m playing solid. This match was definitely better than the last round, but I still can play better.”
.@KaPliskova finds the corner with the backhand! #BNPPO17 pic.twitter.com/lAipPNvuLy
— WTA (@WTA) March 13, 2017
Begu enjoyed a career-best season in 2016, getting up to World No.22 after reaching the second week of the French Open and winning her third career title in Florianopolis. The Romanian got out to a 5-3 lead in the second, and later held a pair of set points on her serve to force a deciding set.
Unwilling to go the distance for a second straight match, Pliskova dug in her heels to level the set and dominate the eunsuing tie-break, booking her spot in the round of 16 after little more than two hours on the court.
“Mentally, I was up at that point; I knew she had it in her head that she’d had two set points. I just wanted to play more aggressively because so was she; the first one stepping into the court won the point, so it ended up going my way.”
.@KaPliskova advances to @BNPParibasOpen Round of 16 with 6-4, 7-6 (2) win over Begu! pic.twitter.com/wRns2M8mhU
— WTA (@WTA) March 13, 2017
Up next for the Czech powerhouse is No.15 seed Timea Bacsinszky, who won a topsy-turvy three-setter against No.18 seed Kiki Bertens, saving four match points after missing out on three of her own to win the affair, 6-3, 5-7, 7-6(8).
“That’ll be another tough one. I beat her in Fed Cup but I’ve lost to her before. She had a tough match today, but there’ll be a day off, and I think she’ll be ready. She always plays well here, has a good game for this surface with the spin on her forehand. I’ll have to be ready for the backhand.
“I don’t want to be in the position where she’s dictating, so I’ll have to play faster. There’s a few players like this, and I have to be ready for them with my legs, closing the ball at the net, and being aggressive.”
The normally gregarious Swiss veteran was speechless when first asked how she came out victorious.
3 hours, 22 minutes!@TimeaOfficial saves FOUR match points to beat Bertens 6-3, 5-7, 7-6(8)! #BNPPO17 pic.twitter.com/ssSLWyrTyu
— WTA (@WTA) March 12, 2017
“Next question,” she joked to WTA Insider. “Is there a hospital nearby? To be more serious, when you’re at 6-6 in the third after a rollercoaster match, you know it can go either way. There’s no right tactics, things to do, thinking you have to hit aces or take more risks. It’s all about feeling what’s coming, when, how, trying to gauge what your opponent is thinking.
“We have a lot of time to think 25 seconds in between points, not to mention the decisions we make in seconds between shots!”