No. 1 Minella reaches singles, doubles finals
Will face occasional practice partner No. 3 Cepede Royg
Despite a tennis-ball-sized welt on her back, Mandy Minella has plenty of reasons to be happy with her week in Albuquerque.
Minella of Luxembourg, the top seed in the Coleman Vision Tennis Championships being played at the Tanoan Country Club, advanced to today’s finals in both the singles and doubles draw.
“It’s always great to be in the finals because everybody is really good,” she said after her semifinal matches Saturday. “It’s not something that happens every week. I guess we (along with doubles partner Elise Mertens of Belgium) are pretty much excited. And I’m twice excited.”
The top-seeded Minella will meet occasional practice partner No. 3 Veronica Cepede Royg of Paraguay in the singles final at noon, followed by the doubles match as second-seeded Minella
Today Coleman Vision singles final, noon, Tanoan Country Club
and Mertens meet No. 3 Michaella Krajicek and Maria Sanchez.
For No. 3 Cepede Royg, it’s her first finals appearance since December, and she needed to recover from being a set down to beat second-seeded Alison Van Uytvanck 6-7 (3), 6-1, 6-4.
Cepede Royg trailed in the final set 3-1 before rallying to win four straight games, a surge sparked in part by her opponent.
“She did three double faults at 3-1,” she said. “That’s helpful for me because she served really well. She played really well.”
Given that boost for a service break, Cepede Royg powered through the next three games before Van Uytvanck held serve.
And that brought up a crucial game as Cepede Royg tried to hold serve to win the match. And she came up big, with a tremendous point save off a Van Uytvanck blast, followed on the next hit by a blistering, passing winner.
“I didn’t think about it,” Cepede Royg said. “I just hit the ball and, oh my God, it was good, good. When you have 5-4 on serve, it isn’t easy because you are a little bit nervous. When I did the first one, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I did good.’ It was really good.”
That essentially was the match as she cruised through the final points to claim the match.
“When you do that, you have more confidence,” Cepede Royg said. “When I made that point, I said, ‘This is my game.’ ”
A fifth-year professional, she has played in Europe, the U.S. and across South America. Despite the altitude, playing in Albuquerque and other places in the Southwest is more enjoyable than Europe, Cepede Royg said.
“The U.S., I like it,” she said. “When I have to go to Europe, it’s a lot more difficult. Here, you have more facilities. You have a car, shopping. Everything is here. When you go to Europe, you don’t have a car, and you have to go to small cities, so you don’t have shopping. The weather is different, too. It’s always cold and raining. I like playing in South America and here. When I come here, it’s really good. I’m having fun here.”
Minella was having fun, too, after handling Aleksandra Wozniak 6-1, 6-7 (3), 6-0.
“I guess I was in control,” Minella said. “In the second set, I lost my position a little bit. I was too defensive, and she could step in. But I could turn it around in the third, and I’m happy I’m through.”
As a matter of fact, about the only thing that was a bit of downer for Minella on the day happened in the midst of the 6-2, 6-3 doubles victory, when Mertens drilled a forehand return directly into Minella’s back.
That’s really not too unusual for first-time partners, though, Mertens said.
“We match well,” she said. “Sometimes it does, sometime it doesn’t, and this one does. But it’s doubles. It (hitting a partner) happens once it a while.”
For her part, Minella was able to quickly shrug it off.
“It hurt a little bit,” she said, “but I’m a tough cookie.”