The championship match of the H-E-B Women’s Pro Tennis Open 2023 between fourth-seeded Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva and sixth-seeded Hanna Chang, pictured above, features two players who prefer to stick to a game plan — on and off the court.
The two have never played an ITF match. The WTA ranks Chang a tad higher, at No. 320, than Jimenez Kasintseva at No. 336.
Jimenez Kasintseva, an 18-year-old from Andorra, calls herself “a routine girl.”
“I usually never change,” the 18-year-old said with a laugh after winning her semifinal over Chloe Beck, 6-4, 6-3, at the Texas Tennis Center. “I even eat at the same places. It’s always the same, I eat breakfast at the same place. I always do the same thing. My warmups are always the same, my cooldowns are always the same. Maybe the strategies change or sometimes you cannot follow your routines, but I try to stay consistent every day so I can be more prepared.”
Jimenez Kasintseva is going for her second title of the year, having won on a W25 clay event in Boca Raton, Fla.
Chang, a 25-year-old from Southern California, is known for grinding down her opponents and staying focused. “Honestly, I wasn’t thinking about the points,” the 25-year-old Californian said after defeating Madison Sieg, 7-6 (4), 6-2. “I was trying to get myself to regroup point to point. I think that helped.”
She did change things up a bit to take control of her semifinal.
“I think it was really about who can stay in that rally for a long time and start building it side to side and look for openings to go in,” Chang said about the tense first set. “I think she was doing that a lot better than me halfway through the first set. Then in the second set, I think she got a little tired and I started to go in more. I think that was the big difference – playing a little bit more aggressive and solid at the same time. I was a little more aggressive.”
Of course, Chang planned a laid-back night before her fourth final of the year. She won a W15 in Lakewood, Calif., and a W25 in South Korea, both on hardcourts.
“I’m going to have to see the physio, get myself treated and get a nice lunch and dinner and rest,” she said.
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.