Tennis News

WASHINGTON DC, USA – No.136-ranked Risa Ozaki scored the biggest win of her career in the opening round of the Citi Open, knocking out defending champion Sloane Stephens 6-2, 6-1.

The 22 year old from Japan came into the matchup having won just two WTA-level matches all year long, but put all that disappointment behind her against the No.23-ranked American.

Despite being broken in the opening game, Ozaki turned up the intensity and rattled off the next nine games in a row to leave Stephens reeling, down a set and a break. The American held serve to get her name on the score board at 3-1, but it wasn’t enough to turn around Ozaki’s momentum as she swept the match in just 57 minutes.

“I just played real bad. Nothing more, nothing less,” Stephens assessed after the match. “Today just sucked, it was just one of those days where everything was really bad.”

“Obviously, I’m not the first person to have a bad day and I won’t be the last. Hopefully I can pull myself together and next week will be better than this week. I won’t look too deep into this.”

Ozaki’s win sets up a second-round clash with on-the-rise Brit Naomi Broady, who saw off Irina Falconi in straight sets earlier in the day, 6-3, 6-4.

Giorgi Ousts No.5 Seed Bouchard

The unseeded Camila Giorgi snapped a four-match losing streak in her straight sets upset over No.5 seed Eugenie Bouchard in their Washington DC opener. Even more impressive, Giorgi recorded her first win against the Canadian; she previously hadn’t even won a set against Bouchard in either of their previous two encounters.

Bouchard initially struggled against the pace of the Italian’s high octane game, falling a break down in the opening set.

“My game is based on moving forward as soon as I can,” Giorgi said, speaking to Tennis Channel after the match. “Today it worked, I think, almost everything.”

Facing elimination at a set down and 5-2 in the second, Bouchard gritted out a pair of back to back games to cut into Giorgi’s lead, and even held game point on her serve at 5-4 to try to even the score. But the ultra-aggressive Giorgi saw off her challenge with her usual calm, quick game, climbing back from 15-40 to take the match 7-5, 6-4.

After the match, she immediately grabbed her cell phone to make a very special call.

“I called my dad, my coach,” Giorgi said. “He told me I played a good game, very aggressive. He was happy.”

Giorgi will go on to play Tamira Paszek in the next round. The Austrian No.108 took down American qualifier Lauren Albanese in a comfortable 6-3, 6-4 win.

More to come… 

– All photos courtesy of Citi Open and Getty Images

Venus Williams might be 36 years old – but she’s already got her eyes focused on playing an event in three years’ time.

That’s when she will get the chance to reclaim her Olympic doubles gold in Tokyo with sister Serena.

“That’s my absolute dream,” she told Reuters. “I have a dream partner. I would love that.”

The pair are three-time champions but could not defend their title in Rio last year, where they were eliminated in the first round by Lucie Safarova and Barbora Strycova.

Venus attributed her long career partially to a sheer love of the game.

“You have to love it, it’s a lot of work,” she told the Associated Press. “If you feel like you have more to give, the heart is in it, that makes it pretty easy to get out there and pay the price.”

She has plenty of other interests off the court, though – not least her fashion line, EleVen by Venus, which will be worn by ballgirls and ushers at the BNP Paribas Showdown at Madison Square Garden on Monday evening, where she will also be playing a singles exhibition match against Garbiñe Muguruza.

She is also studying for a Masters degree in interior design, but her millions of fans will be relieved to know she won’t be putting down her racquet permanently for a long time yet.

“I’m planning on playing tennis for a very long time yet,” Williams said. “That dream is still going strong.”