Bellis starts with a breeze on perfect night at Stanford
Beaming in triumph, delighted to have performed so well at home, CiCi Bellis lofted a celebratory tennis ball high into the south stands of the stadium, where it fell directly into the hands of a gradeschool boy.
Even her post-match shots found the proper destination.
“I wanted to play so well in front of you guys,” she told the crowd at Stanford’s Taube Family Tennis Stadium. “I’ve never been more happy to be here.”
In the featured match of
Tuesday’s play at the Bank of the West Classic, Bellis hammered out a 6-3, 6-2 victory over France’s Alizé Cornet, a seasoned tour veteran of 27 who had no answers for the 18-year-old’s steady power and resolve. It was the perfect start to Bellis’ tournament, in the shadow of her Atherton home, and a time to reflect upon this time last year, when she was weighing the options of attending Stanford or turning pro.
“It’s crazy, to think how different life would be if I was about to attend Stanford,” she said. “It was going to be great either way. But I think I made the right choice (she has earned $729,492). It was amazing out there tonight. I had at least 40 people, family and friends, who came out. I didn’t feel any pressure at all. It was just so exciting to play at home. It helped me a lot.”
Before Bellis can meet a loaded field head-on, she’ll need to get past Paraguay’s Veronica Cepede Royg in the second round — and it’s a name Bellis well recalls. Attempting to qualify for the 2015 French Open’s main draw, she lost to Cepede Royg in the first round and had to regroup for the juniors event. Cepede Royg is a qualifier here as well, but she looked strong in a three-set victory over Stanford alum Kristie Ahn.
It was another evening of perfect weather, making for no-excuse tennis, and the Bellis-Cornet match featured the type of hard-hitting baseline exchanges that have come to define women’s tennis. Variety was at a premium, but hardly nonexistent. Four times in the first set, Cornet won points with feathery forehand drop shots from around the baseline — no easy task from that distance.
What the tour has come to know about Bellis, however, is that she’s a thinker and a master of subtle adjustments. When Cornet tried that shot again down 3-1 in the second set, Bellis raced to retrieve it and wound up winning the point with a backhand volley.
“That’s one of the best drop shots I’ve seen,” Bellis said. “But I think I read the ball pretty well, and once she started doing it more, I could kind of tell when it was coming. She wasn’t doing it at the end.”
Bellis also displayed one of the prettiest shots in tennis, perfected by the likes of Billie Jean King and Steffi Graf but rarely seen today: the crosscourt backhand slice, struck low and deep with just one hand. And Bellis’ much-improved serve at times bested Cornet’s best efforts by 20 mph. These are some of the reasons Chris Evert, who has trained with Bellis in the USTA development program, has said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s top 20 by the end of the year.”
There’s no such thing as an easy draw in a field this strong, but Bellis surely knows she wouldn’t have to face Maria Sharapova, top-seeded Garbiñe Muguruza or Madison Keys until the final, should she get that far.
In Bellis’ half of the draw, the biggest obstacle could be Petra Kvitova, the two-time Wimbledon champion who plays her first match Thursday. That section also includes 18th-ranked Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and U.S. tour veterans Alison Riske, Nicole Gibbs and Coco Vandeweghe, the 2012 Bank of the West finalist (losing to Serena Williams) who advanced Tuesday when her opponent, Croatia’s Ajla Tomljanovic, retired with a shoulder injury after Vandeweghe had won the first set.
Muguruza is the showcase performer on Wednesday’s program, drawing the 7 p.m. match against 17-year-old American Kayla Day, and she definitely earned it by winning Wimbledon last month — toppling Venus Williams and becoming the first player to beat each Williams sister in a major final. She’s a bit of a curiosity, drifting in and out of form, but at her best, Muguruza takes complete command of the court — on any surface — and can be almost impossible to stop.
How erratic can she be? After winning the 2016 French Open with a straight-set victory over Serena, Muguruza didn’t win another tournament until this year’s Wimbledon, often losing in the first or second round. But give her a moment, something she really wants, and “she doesn’t shrink from the pressure,” Martina Navratilova said on Tennis Channel. “She embraces it.”
“It was amazing out there tonight. I had at least 40 people, family and friends, who came out. I didn’t feel any pressure at all.” CiCi Bellis of Atherton, on playing in the Bank of the West Classic at Stanford