Finally we had a rain-free day in Charleston and after eleven hours of play at the Credit One Bank Invitational Team Peace leads Team Kindness 8-6, as each team won three matches on Day 3, but Team Peace won two of the three two-pointers.
The day opened with Jennifer Brady‘s confident 6-3 6-2 victory over former world No.1 Victoria Azarenka, which earned one point for Team Peace, giving them a 4-2 lead.
Then we had a doubles match carried over from Wednesday, in which Americans Amanda Anisimova and Sloane Stephens recovered from a one-set deficit against Eugenie Bouchard and Danielle Colllins, and despite failing to consolidate a break lead as many as four times in the second set, they manage to add one point to Team Kindness with a 4-6 7-6(5) [10-7] win.
Team Kindness captain Madison Keys, who would have been defending her title at the Volvo Car Open in Charleston had the tournament not been canceled because of coronavirus, fought past Caroline Dolehide 6-1 6-7(6) [10-4], in the exhibition tournament’s final one-point encounter and the last match carried over from Wednesday.
As Thursday’s originally-planned schedule began to unfold and matches started being worth two points, world No.19 Alison Riske narrowly escaped an upset by Team Peace’s 19-year-old Emma Navarro, who is ranked almost 500 WTA spots behind. After a grueling 7-6(5) 4-6 [10-7] triumph, Riske commented on her young opponent, the 2019 French Open junior runner-up:
I’ve been training with Emma leading up to the tournament. The world better watch out for her—she’s coming. I personally think she’s the real deal.
Eugenie Bouchard then beat her fellow Canadian Leylah Fernandez 6-4 6-3, tying the two teams at 6-6.
Sofia Kenin and Bethanie Mattek-Sands are a well-established doubles team (they came to Charleston having played four tournaments together in 2020), so it was expected that they would prevail against Madison Keys and Victoria Azarenka, 6-2 1-6 [10-7].
Thursday’s schedule was packed and matches were quite long, so as the doubles victory of Mattek-Sands and Kenin finished past 1 a.m. the organizers pushed the Tomljanovic-Puig encounter to tomorrow. (source: Tennis.com)
