WASHINGTON, D.C. — Right here, right now, it’s good to be Taylor Townsend.
Nobody at the Mubadala Citi DC Open, quite frankly, has been better.
She’s back in the nation’s capital, where she spent three formative years as a teenager training and learning the game of tennis.
“Yeah,” she told reporters earlier this week, “it’s definitely a vibe. We’re Black Mecca, and so many amazing people of color doing such phenomenal things. That’s why I loved living here, because I felt there were so many, like, people of color that were just doing such amazing things, and, like, it was so inspiring. So many people on their stuff.”
And no one at the moment is on her “stuff” more than Townsend. Maybe it’s the local knowledge — or more likely the overwhelming support she’s feeling here.
On Thursday she dispatched No. 6 seed Sofia Kenin 6-3, 6-0 to advance to the quarterfinals. It was over in under an hour. Dispatched might be too passive a word, because Townsend hit a blazing 15 aces in eight service games. You can do the match on that one.
The 29-year-old mother will play the winner of the later match between No. 1 Jessica Pegula and Leylah Fernandez on Friday.
Let’s review the ludicrous week in progress for Townsend:
- She’s ranked only No. 97 in the PIF WTA Rankings, but she’s got a clean card so far, winning all four sets she’s played.
- Along with first-time partner Zhang Shuai, she’s into the doubles semifinals.
- With a win in Friday’s match, she’ll vault into the No. position for doubles, ahead of her usual partner Katerina Siniakova.
The singles match out on John Harris was played in another dose of heat and humidity — but Townsend was hotter. The initial game was a portent, as she finished it with three unreturned serves (two of them aces) to win at love. But Townsend was just getting started.
There were three more in the fifth game of the set, but in the seventh she outdid herself. All four points came on aces, and with a break of Kenin in the eighth, she served out the set with aces No. 10, No. 11 and No. 12.
Kenin is a legitimate player, ranked No. 26, and was looking for her fourth quarterfinal berth. Three years ago, the long, slow climb began here.
After winning the Australian Open in 2020 and reaching the Roland Garros final — at the age of 21 — Kenin finished as the World No. 4 in back-to-back years.
A series of setbacks followed, and an ankle injury took her out of play for five months in 2022. She arrived in the nation’s capital at No. 416 in the PIF WTA Rankings and promptly lost to Camila Osorio, her seventh straight defeat.
“I didn’t have doubts, but obviously mentally it’s not the most easy,” Kenin told reporters here earlier this week. “I don’t want to go back there again,”
She won her first-round match over Hailey Baptiste, born and raised in Washington, D.C., but Townsend was something else.
And after one last point, the crowd rose for a prolonged standing ovation. And Townsend danced a happy dance.
Right here, right now, it’s good to be Taylor Townsend.