Keys holds off Aussie Open champ Kenin in Charleston

Washington (AFP) – Madison Keys made it via one more stressful produce on Saturday, letting one match point dart before ending off Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin 6-3, 5-7 10-2 within the females’s tennis tournament in Charleston, South Carolina.

Keys, who would had been defending her 2019 Charleston WTA title earlier this year if the coronavirus pandemic hadn’t halted play on the females’s tennis tour, had overcome a uninteresting lapse on Thursday in a 6-1, 6-7 (6/8), 10-4 victory over fellow American Caroline Dolehide.

She said the tight finishes within the 16-participant workforce tournament, being played with strict social distancing protocols and without a spectators, would stand her in correct stead when the WTA resumes in Palermo on August 3.

She became up two breaks at 4-0 within the 2d position, and held a match point in opposition to Kenin’s back within the ninth game that she couldn’t convert.

Keys dropped her subsequent two carrier video games however regrouped within the 10-point tiebreaker, saying she became “type of giving myself a little of little bit of grace, shiny that I produce now not have those tremendous capabilities below my belt true now.

“I know that these matches come in in at hand later, once the tour comes abet and (I’m) just using that as an opportunity and now not being too tough on myself.”

The match pitted the head-ranked gamers to feature within the workforce tournament, which is being played on the the same green clay courts that host the annual WTA Charleston tournament.

Kenin, who won her first Enormous Slam title at the Australian Open in January, is ranked fourth on this planet while Keys is ranked 13th.

“When you play someone like (Kenin) you realize that she is going to up her levels, particularly when it issues,” Keys said. “She certainly did that at the tip of the 2d position.

“A couple of of those capabilities had been me, however I opinion I had a gradual orderly tiebreaker.”

Within the night matches, Jennifer Brady beat fellow American Sloane Stephens 6-3, 7-6 (7/4) while the contest between Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Shelby Rogers became halted by rain.