BIANCA BATTLES INTO U.S. OPEN QUARTER-FINALS
Canadian teen turns back Townsend to extend remarkable run in New York
Of course she wouldn’t be rattled.
In a season of firsts, Bianca Andreescu has added another pair of them to her ledger. A first night match under the lights at the U.S. Open, and now, a first quarter-final appearance in a Grand Slam event, after a relentless win (6-1, 4-6, 6-2) over Taylor Townsend on the Arthur Ashe Stadium court.
Andreescu, the 19-year-old from the suburbs north of Toronto, put on a ferocious early display of tennis, overwhelming Townsend, a 23-year-old American ranked 116th and who came into the match riding the best stretch of play in her professional career. But where Townsend made her surprising run into the fourth round of the U.S. Open with an unorthodox serveand-volley style that befuddled some of her earlier opponents, Andreescu responded with her vast arsenal of shots — and particularly a punishing return game that effectively neutralized Townsend’s serve. She broke the American’s serve three times in the opening set, using hard passing shots and the odd lob to counter Townsend’s tendency to charge the net and try to end point early.
After a 6-1 first set, it looked like it might be a short night of work, but Townsend abandoned her charge-at-all-costs philosophy. That strategy change, combined with Andreescu starting to pile up unforced errors, gave the American her first opening in the match. Townsend won the first three games of the second set — with Andreescu double-faulting three times on the way to dropping a service game — and suddenly the blowout wasn’t so much of a blowout anymore.
Andreescu fought back to level the set at three games apiece, but facing a set point at 4-5, she double-faulted again, letting Townsend square the match.
But then Andreescu flashed the trait for which she’s quickly gaining a reputation, aside from the variety of her shots: her moxie. She reeled off four straight points to break Townsend’s serve and in the following game saved a break point to escape and take a 2-0 lead in the deciding set.
Facing a New York crowd that turned noticeably hostile against her as late Monday turned to early Tuesday, Andreescu simply won enough of the key points she had to have to secure the win. This was something new for Andreescu at this tournament. She had sailed through three straight-sets wins, including one over former world No. 1 Carolina Wozniacki in the third round, and hadn’t had to dig down to win high-leverage points.
But the Canadian didn’t amass her gaudy match record in her rookie season, and didn’t win her first two WTA events, without a knack for making big shots in big moments.
Townsend asked her to make them. And she did. The final set ended up almost matching the dominance of the first.
Regardless of the result in the Townsend match, Andreescu had already put together her best-ever performance in a Grand Slam event. She lost in the second round in the Australian Open in January, and then pulled out of her second-round match in the French Open with a shoulder injury that kept her out for much of the summer season, including Wimbledon.
Making the second week in New York only solidified her outrageous charge up the WTA rankings. Consider that over the course of the 2018 season, she rose from 189 to 178 in the rankings. In 2019, she went from 178 to a likely ranking inside the top 12 in the world once the U.S. Open is completed. That rise comes on the back of a winning streak, through three rounds in New York, of 42-4 in all competitions. Perhaps more impressive than the overall record is the list of women she has beaten over that stretch: Karolina Pliskova, Kiki Bertens, Angelique Kerber (twice), Elina Svitolina, Garbine Muguruza, Caroline Wozniacki (twice) and both Williams sisters, although the win over Serena came when she retired with an injury in Toronto.
The only comparable rise in Canadian history came with Genie Bouchard’s spectacular 2014 season, but she began that campaign just outside the top 30 in the rankings and ended it in seventh. She also lost more than 20 matches in that season. Andreescu’s blistering out-ofnowhere run simply has no equal in the country’s tennis annals.
And after the win that came uncomfortably late at night, she now finds herself in what has turned into a very comfortable draw.
The latest big name to fall on Andreescu’s side of the bracket was Naomi Osaka, the world No. 1 and defending champion here. She was beaten in straight sets by Belinda Bencic, the 13th seed from Switzerland.
Osaka joins a long list of women seeded higher than Andreescu that were already eliminated from her side of the draw: Simona Halep (4), Karolina Pliskova (6), Kiki Bertens (7), Aryna Sabalenka (9) and Sloane Stephens (11). Bencic is the highest seed left on that side.
Next up for the Canadian will be a quarter-final match against Belgium’s Elise Mertens, the 25th seed in New York. Mertens had a dominating performance of her own on Monday — much earlier Monday — with a straight-sets (6-1, 6-1) dismissal of American Kristie Ahn.