It’s been an endless winter in the Mid-Atlantic, so an 82-degree partly cloudy day with players like top seed Renata Zarazua and special guest star Jennifer Brady on the Har-Tru courts of Charlottesville for some outdoor pro tennis was nothing short of therapy on Thursday.
I’ve been to the Boar’s Head resort to cover tennis more than any other venue (30 times?) because there’s an indoor Challenger in October and the Women’s outdoor event in April. Twice a year, I descend upon this trendy town and even tonier resort to attend these events. Let me just say that although a patrician atmosphere surrounds you here, this is perhaps the most egalitarian tournament of them all, save US Open Fan Week.
That’s because this W100, just like the Challenger in the fall, is free to attend right up until the weekend. Like all of the events of this level, the player access is phenomenal. You WILL be eating your lunch next to a table of college phenoms turned pro. You WILL inevitably be in line to purchase a drink and a future top tenner will be grabbing a banana and fumbling through her wallet in front of you. Always accessible, you can even hear them calling Mom and Dad while you’re trying to concentrate on the burrito in front of you.
On to the business of the final R16 matches. Easily, the popcorn match of the day was Akasha Urhobo’s win against 35-year-old Arantxa Rus. This woman has been around almost as long as my ATF Dutchman Ernests Gulbis. She’d beaten Kim Clijsters and Sam Stosur, but Rus couldn’t beat the 19-year-old Floridian today. It’s hard to call a match in which you won the first set 6-0 a comeback win, but that’s what it felt like as the pressure was on Urhobo all the way to the end of the 3rd set. Urhobo will look for a spot in the semis against Kayla Cross tomorrow, a 7-5, 7-5 winner over Katrina Scott.
Liz Mandlik took out the darling 16-year-old Russian Kristina Liutova in a match in which Liutova looked listless throughout, 6-3, 6-2. Mandlik gets fellow American Mary Stoiana, the 4 seed, a 6-1, 6-4 winner over Thea Frodin.
Three Argentines in the whole damn draw and two of them had to face each other, as is the law of the universe. Your 6-3, 3-6, 6-2 winner was Martina Capurro Tabard over Maria Lourdes Carle. The lucky one will play 3 seed Kayla Day or, you guessed it, the third Argentine in the draw. Julia Riera and Day are locked up in the third set at the time of typing, having each scored a tiebreak set win and on serve beginning the final stanza. [Edit: It’s Kayla Day into the quarters]
That leaves us with top seed Renata Zarazua, most remembered for knocking Maddy Keys out of last year’s US Open, who will be playing young Pole Gina Feistel tomorrow. Zarazua lost the first set of her match against American Haley Giavara before bouncing back 6-7, 6-3, 6-2. Former World #13 Jennifer Brady, coming back from injury on a protected ranking, and who won by retirement yesterday, fell to retirement today, leaving Feistel a 3-6, 6-1 quarterfinalist. So much for the Brady comeback story this week, but we know we’ll see more of her winning ways in the future.
—S. Fogleman
Tennis Atlantic 
Return Serve?