Madison Keys on Monday showed her ability to make an impact on the new grass-court season with a 7-6 (7/3), 6-4 victory over Timea Babos in the first round of the Aegon Classic.
The 21-year-old Floridian, described last year as a future world No. 1 by Serena Williams, moved swiftly into a 5-2 lead against a Hungarian opponent who beat her in the Wimbledon warm-up event two years ago.
Keys then faltered while trying to serve out for the set and trailed 3-0 in the tiebreaker.
Photo: Nigel French/Press Association via AP
“I was rushing too much, but after that I got a read on her serve and served better myself,” Keys said.
The combination saw her ease through to the second round of the tournament.
“I’m more confident after the clay-court season, when I learned how to figure stuff out better,” she said, referring to a sequence in Rome where she won a semi-final against Garbine Muguruza, who shortly afterward became the French Open champion.
Keys could face Czech Petra Kvitova, a two-time Wimbledon champion, in the quarter-finals.
Belinda Bencic, the youngest player in the top 10 at 19 years old, showed that she also talks a good game ahead of her opening match.
Bencic made her comeback after two months out with four matches on grass at the Ricoh Open in the Netherlands last week and begins against Irina-Camelia Begu of Romania.
The fourth-seeded Swiss player said she can improve on that performance this week.
Bencic is also hoping for a chance to repeat her Toronto victory last year over Williams, who is not in Birmingham.
“I gave her too much respect when I first played her, but now try to ignore who she is,” Bencic said.
MALLORCA OPEN
AP, MALLORCA, Spain
The novelty of a new tournament drove former top-10 player Daniela Hantuchova to begin her 18th grass-court season on the WTA Tour at the Mallorca Open, where she won her opening match on Monday.
Hantuchova has usually spent this week at the Aegon Classic in Birmingham, England, where she won as recently as 2013, but the Slovak accepted a wild-card entry into the new Mallorca event and used it to beat Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan 6-1, 6-3.
Also on Monday, Caroline Garcia of France, the only seeded player in action, defeated Carina Witthoeft of Germany 7-5, 6-4.
Anastasija Sevastova of Latvia and Mariana Duque-Marino of Colombia were also first-round winners in a tournament in which the top-seeded player is French Open champion Garbine Muguruza.
In the first round of the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Chin-wei and Asia Muhammad of the US fell to a 6-4, 7-6 (7-0) defeat to German duo Anna-Lena Friedsam and Laura Siegemund in 1 hour, 23 minutes.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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