From qualifying to final: the dream lives on
Canadian teenager who had to earn her place in the main draw is a worthy finalist, writes David Long.
The dream lives on for Canada’s Bianca Andreescu.
The 18-year-old world No 152 defeated the third seed Hsieh SuWei 6-3 6-3 yesterday to set up a showdown against Germany’s Julia Goerges tonight.
Andreescu has been the talk of this tournament with her wins over Caroline Wozniacki and Venus Williams in the last two rounds.
Some players can get to a final by getting a fortunate draw, managing to avoid the top players.
But that certainly couldn’t be said of Andreescu, who’s beat the No 1, 6 and 3 seeds in her past three matches and also come through the qualifying draw.
If she goes on to also beat the No 2 seed today, no one could ever argue that she didn’t deserve this title.
Andreescu got off to a stunning start, winning five games in a row to go up 5-1 in the opening set.
She then lost two straight games but broke her opponent for the set.
The march continued for Andreescu in the second set and she had a match point with Hsieh serving at 2-5, but put the return into the net.
But in the next game she got herself into a position for two more set points and with the first Bianca Andreescu was helped on her way to where she is by New Zealand’s national performance coach.
Andreescu stunned the tennis world by beating two former world No 1s, Caroline Wozniacki and Venus Williams at the Classic on her way to last night’s semifinal against Su-Wei Hsieh from Taipei. Andreescu is a product of Tennis Canada, coming through the same system that developed Milos Raonic, Eugenie Bouchard and Denis Shapovalov.
When younger, Andreescu was coached by Frenchman Christophe Lambert, who was appointed the New Zealand national performance coach last April.
Lambert is responsible for developing New Zealand’s most promising tennis players and working with Tennis NZ’s high-performance director Simon Rea to put in place systems to help cultivate young players. Andreescu says she fondly remembers working with Lambert and believes he had a big impact in her development.
‘‘He worked for Tennis Canada for a while when I was 14, 15 and I really enjoyed working with him and I had a lot of great results,’’ she says. ‘‘We do keep in touch sometimes, but it’s hard to see each other because he’s here in New Zealand, all of the way across the world. ‘‘But I’ve learned a lot from him and I’m really grateful of our experience together.’’
Lambert was with the British LTA before going to Canada and worked with Andy Murray. He also helped out with the Chinese Davis Cup team and Andreescu was sad to see him move on from Tennis Canada. ‘‘Yes, for sure. He’s one of the best coaches I’ve had, but he had to. Maybe in the future our paths will cross again, who knows?’’ Lambert has been sitting in Andreescu’s box during her matches at the Classic, but hasn’t been involved in coaching her. She believes he can do for Tennis New Zealand what he did in Canada.
‘‘For sure, he’s a really good coach and he’s been doing a great job, especially with the younger players,’’ she said.
Meanwhile, two months ago in Lawrence, near Kansas City, Andreescu played against New Zealand’s Paige Hourigan and beat her 6-1 6-1. Although the scoreline was one-sided, Andreescu recognised Hourigan as a good player. ‘‘She’s a very good player, she’s very aggressive, has a pretty good serve and I think if she continues like that she can be a very good player.’’
of them Hsieh went too long with a backhand.
Earlier, Goerges stormed her way into a successive Classic final by beating Viktoria Kuzmova 6-1 7-6. The German second seed had only shown patches
of herself during the defence of her title, but in the first set against the Slovakian, she reached her peak, playing some incredible tennis. The first signs of life from Kuzmova came when she was down 0-40 and 5-0 in the opening set.
Kuzmova went on a run to win five points in a row and at least was able to get on the board.
The second set ended up going to a tiebreak. Goerges had two match points at 6-4 but blew both of them with some poor tennis.
But with the next point she ripped a winner and on her third matchpoint Kuzmova cracked a return straight into the net.
‘‘I played pretty aggressive, overall it was a pretty good match