Madison Keys has done it again. It's been more than a year since her last triumph in a WTA level tournament, but now she's back. Struggling with a wrist surgery and a grueling recovery time, the young American tennis star had a slow start in 2017 skipping the first few months of the season. With her ranking still plunging due to the lack of results, she entered the Bank of the West Classic as the 21st in the world. As it turned out, she went on winning the Premier category event to see her name re-entering the top 20. The updated ranking put her on the 17th spot.
The 22-year-old could use this momentum in what will be a hot summer during the North American outdoor hard swing.
Madison Keys outplayed Coco Vandeweghe
The final of the WTA event in Stanford, CA put together Madison Keys and Coco Vandeweghe. As expected, their first ever clash in the WTA Tour was nothing but a full-force demonstration of blistering tennis. As both players love hitting the ball hard from the baseline, the crowd witnessed quite a show. But in the end, it was Keys who came out as the winner of the contest. She had the clearer head especially in the key moments while Coco did a little too many unforced errors.
The opening set saw them surviving on their own serve, each one of them having to save some break points.
It all came down to a tie-break where Keys took the driving seat in her possession. Being a set ahead gives a certain burst of confidence thus Keys started to dominate the court. The second act went pretty much the same. At 4-4 Vandeweghe didn't handle the pressure as it should and lost her service game. That gave to Keys the opportunity to serve out the match in the next one, which she did.
Ekaterina Makarova denies Julia Goerges the City Open title
Stanford was not the only WTA event of the last week as another contingent was in Wahington D.C. at a WTA International event. The final brought Makarova (58 WTA) and Goerges (40 WTA) together. The opening set was clearly dominated by the 28-year-old German, and she won it by 6-3.
It seemed that the curse of the last two WTA finals lost recently (Bucharest and Mallorca) was about to end. But, Makarova had her own agenda as she pushed the second set into a tie-break where she prevailed. In the third set, Julia Goerges lost any sense of stability and control as the 29-year-old Russian cruised past her winning the act by 6-0. A strong performance for the Russian who once again had to recover from a set down. On the other side, Goerges loses her third WTA final of the season.
