Young American Grace Min Upsets Pavlyuchenkova At Swedish Open

While the state of American tennis is in a bit of a downswing in recent years, especially in Grand Slam events, there are a number of young players on the horizon who have showed promise on the professional level.

Last week, 21-year old Shelby Rogers reached the finals of the Bastein Ladies tournament in Austria before falling to Andrea Petkovic in the title match. Grace Min, a 20-year old American, lost to Petkovic in the semifinals of that event but flashed signs of her rising talent.

Min has now carried that momentum into Bastad, Sweden for the Collector Swedish Open. Coming off the biggest week of her career, she notched the biggest win of her career on Monday, defeating second-seeded Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-0, 6-4 in their first-round matchup.

“I was able to draw a lot of confidence from last week and bring it over here,” said Min. “I played pretty solid and I didn’t make many errors and she made a few more. That was really the difference. I made more balls than her.”

From the onset, Min was in control of the match. She converted all three break point opportunities in the opening set as she rolled to the 6-0 opening frame win.

Pavlyuchenkova then jumped out to a 4-2 lead in the second set and looked as if she would force a deciding third set. However, Min rattled off four-straight games thanks in part to a couple of big break points, and took the second set 6-4 to seal the victory.

In all, the American converted six break points throughout the match to control the serve of the 23rd ranked Pavlyuchenkova which proved to be the difference. Min, who hails from Atlanta, Georgia, had never reached even the second round of a WTA event before last week’s tournament in Austria but now enters the second round in Sweden.

“This is my first time here, and it’s amazing,” said Min. “We had the mountaisn in Bad Gastein and now the beach here. It’s a pretty cool turnaround.”

In the second round, Min will face off with Russian Alexandra Panova who defeated Romanian Alexandra Cadantu in their first-round clash on Tuesday. Min entered the Swedish Open with a career-best ranking of 114 and will look to continue to improve on that when she takes on Panova.