Although they were not the highest seeded players when the H-E-B Women’s Pro Tennis Open began, fourth-seeded Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva of Andorra and sixth-seeded Hanna Chang of Fontana, California, played all week as though they were destined to be in the final.
Jimenez Kasintseva, pictured above, defeated Chloe Beck, 6-4, 6-3, in Saturday’s semifinals at the Texas Tennis Center on a foggy morning. Chang was a 7-6 (4), 6-2 winner of Madison Sieg. Chang, 25, took advantage of Sieg’s low energy in the second set to win the match.
“I think she was doing that a lot better than me halfway through the first set,” Chang said of her 20-year-old opponent. Then in the second set, I think she got a little tired and I started to go in more. “ think that was the big difference – playing a little bit more aggressive and solid at the same time.”
Beck posed a different challenge for Jimenez Kasintseva. “She’s a very tricky player,” the 18-year-old Andorran said. “She plays slice, she likes to go in for the volleys. I honestly wasn’t very comfortable today because her game is very tricky.”
Jimenez Kasintseva and Chang have never faced in each other in ITF events. Even though she is lower seeded, Chung has a current WTA ranking of No. 320, while Jimenez Kasintseva is ranked No. 336.
Snow Han and Yujia Huang of China pulled off the one upset of the day, def
eating the top-seeded pair ofMaria Kozyreva and Ashley Lahey, 7-5, 6-2, 10-8 in the doubles championship. This was the third ITF final of the year for Han (in back seat) and Huang but their first title.
Article and photograph by Bevo Video Productions, a division of Texas Student Media at UT-Austin’s Moody College of Communication.
Check out the bios of the H-E-B Women’s Pro Open players.