The famed PSA Carol Weymuller Open—one of the longest-established events on the professional tour—returns to the Heights Casino in Brooklyn, New York, for the forty-second year this week.
The first round of qualifying played out Wednesday night with Thursday’s qualifying finals completing the $50,000, 16-player main draw. All matches will be streamed and scored live on U.S. Pro Series Live powered by www.clublocker.com.
The high-caliber draw attracted five of the world’s top 10 women including world No. 1 and top seed Raneem El Welily, returning champion and three seed Alison Waters, returning finalist Omneya Abdel Kawy, and two seed Laura Massaro.
World No. 37 Olivia Blatchford was the only American to enter the tournament. Blatchford grew up playing on the Heights Casino courts and was backed by an enthusiastic home crowd Wednesday night in her qualifier against Denmark’s Line Hansen, who had defeated the American earlier in the week in the NetSuite Open quarterfinals in three games. Their Brooklyn match went down to the wire with a Hansen pulling through a tiebreaker 14-12 in the fifth game ending home hopes.
“To be honest I think that Olivia played better and deserved to win,” Hansen said after the match. I think that she’s really talented and when she gets the last parts of her game right she’ll be very dangerous. I hope that I can step it up tomorrow as I was struggling to find the right pace on there, but I’ll take the win!”
After two rounds of qualifying, the bottom half of the main draw will play our Thursday night in Brooklyn. Live streaming and scoring is available on U.S. Pro Series Live powered by www.clublocker.com. For more information, like Carol Weymuller Open on facebook, and follow @CarolWeymuller on Twitter.