Brady wins first title in Kentucky: ‘Everything I’ve imagined is definitely a reality’
As a freshman at UCLA in 2014, Jennifer Brady led the Bruins to the NCAA team tennis championship. Six years later, the 25-year-old from Pennsylvania has a championship all to herself.
Utilizing the same power game that helped her dominate rising star Coco Gauff in the semifinals, Brady knocked off Switzerland’s Jil Teichmann 6-3, 6-4, in the finals of the Top Seed Open at Top Seed Tennis Club in Nicholasville on Sunday to earn her first career Women’s Tennis Association title.
“It feels great. You know, there’s only one winner each week and to walk away with that trophy … for my first title in America, I’m really, really happy,” Brady told the media during a post-match Zoom teleconference. “I’ve always wanted to start off by winning a WTA title. Everything I’ve imagined is definitely a reality (now).”
Last December in the Limoges WTA Challenger in France, Teichmann defeated Brady in a tight contest, pulling out a second-set tiebreaker to win 7-5, 7-6 (14-12). Things were similarly nip-and-tuck early in Sunday’s rematch, with the duo trading games to make it 3-3 in the first set.
The match turned in the seventh game, where Brady got the best of a nine-minute battle to pull ahead 4-3. She never trailed from that point, jumping ahead 2-0 in the second set to seize control.
“Before I walked onto the court I was like, ‘I have to believe in myself that I can win this,’ otherwise it doesn’t really make sense for me to walk out there,” Brady said. “I think that 4-3 game where I held serve was definitely something that really helped me throughout the rest of the match.”
Brady, who entered the tournament No. 49 in the WTA rankings, did not lose a single set during her five matches in Nicholasville. None of her competitors got closer than 6-4 in a set all week long. Teichmann, who came in ranked No. 63, was similarly dominant on her road to the finals. The 23-year-old left-hander won every set in her first four matches before running into Brady.
Brady will likely jump into the top 40 when the new WTA rankings are released Monday and she’ll carry a ton of momentum into the Western and Southern Open and U.S. Open, both in New York City, later this month.
Brady said she’d celebrate her Top Seed Open title by ordering “something delicious” from Uber Eats — she even offered to buy dinner for anyone else from the tournament sticking around Kentucky on Sunday night — then head to the Big Apple on Monday to begin preparing for her next competition.
“I’m just happy to win the title in America,” Brady said. “Everybody remembers their first title, I’m sure. But for me to win here at home in America is awesome.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing how everything turns out (at the U.S. Open). Everybody is pretty excited to go and play and I’m pretty excited to head off tomorrow to get there.”
Fourth time’s the charm
Brady’s fourth trip to central Kentucky finally resulted in the raising of a championship trophy. It was a natural progression from her first three visits.
Brady competed in the Lexington Challenger tournament three years in a row the last decade. In 2013, Brady lost in the first round to top-seeded Misaki Doi of Japan. In 2014, she fell in three sets in the second round to eventual runner-up Nicole Gibbs before making it to the quarterfinals in 2015.
Well-spoken
Tennis is truly a global sport, with players from all over the world competing on the same professional tours.
In that international landscape, there might not be a men’s or women’s player on the pro circuit who possesses a broader ability than Teichmann to communicate with their peers. The Top Seed Open runner up, who was born in Barcelona and lived in Spain until moving to Switzerland at age 14, fluently speaks five different languages: Spanish, German, English, French and Catalan — a Latin-based language widely used in eastern Spain.
During a 2015 interview with freelance reporter Giulio Gasparin, Teichmann said, “I love languages, there are people saying ‘wow, you speak everything,’ but sometimes it is not even good, because I don’t know what to say as there is a big mess in my head.”
Record numbers
If the Tennis Channel’s viewership numbers from the Top Seed Open are any indication, interest in professional tennis is increasing during an era in which the coronavirus pandemic has severely reduced the number of sporting events available to consumers.
Monday’s broadcast of the first day of the main draw drew the channel’s most viewers since the coronavirus shutdown began. Tuesday was Tennis Channel’s highest-rated day since Feb. 29, when matches with legends Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic were broadcast.
“We saw almost a doubling from day one to day two,” Tennis Channel president Ken Solomon told the Herald-Leader in a phone interview. “It’s been very significant and a very important event … It’s going to be record-breaking numbers (of viewers), certainly since March.”
While the individual nature of tennis makes the sport uniquely suited to adapting to the current landscape, there are still challenges. The Top Seed Open was conducted without fans in a bubble environment similar to the ones used by the NBA and NHL, with players restricted to the Top Seed facility and the official event hotel.
Likewise, the Tennis Channel’s staff also lived in a bubble for the last week. They also developed new ways of producing the event, using new techniques like remote camera operation to minimize the number of bodies on the court during matches.
“There’s been a tremendous amount of re-engineering,” Solomon said. “The drone shots are spectacular. We’ve used rail cameras and a lot of other new techniques. A lot of innovations have come, but it has been ‘safety first,’ and I think it’s a place where tennis has led the way … with safety success and creating a good product.”
All indications are that the Top Seed Open was a triumph for the channel, as a huge number of viewers tuned in for a tournament that featured some of the most iconic athletes in the history of tennis, such as former world’s No. 1-ranked player and two-time Grand Slam champion Victoria Azarenka and legendary sisters Venus and Serena Williams. The highlight of the early stretch of the tournament was the 31st singles contest between the two, with younger sister Serena rallying to pull out a three-set thriller.
“They delivered,” Solomon said of the quarterfinals match between the iconic siblings, which Serena won 3-6, 6-3, 6-4. “Our thoughts were how wonderful it was to see history. We were thinking of it as Wimbledon in the Bluegrass.”
