WHAT HAPPENED: USTA wild card Robin Montgomery received a rude “Welcome to the Grand Slams” greeting from No. 23 seed Yulia Putintseva as the 25-year-old WTA veteran ousted the tournament’s youngest player as Day 1 of the 2020 US Open came to a close on Monday.
Playing under the lights on Court 5, the Moscow-born Putintseva representing Kazakhstan dominated the 15-year-old Montgomery of Washington, D.C., 6-1, 6-3.
Montgomery showed moments of promise in the second set with her fluid lefty groundstrokes as she was up a break and 3-1 before the world’s No. 35-ranked Putintseva kicked it into another gear and ran past the promising Montgomery playing in her first WTA-level match.
"She has a big game and has some big shots," said Putinseva, who lives and trains full-time in Florida. "She has a lot of good years in front of her. She was a little inconsistent, but she’s only 15 so I only expect to see her getting better over the next few years."
Montgomery—ranked. No. 597 in the world—had her serve broken four times and had 17 unforced errors in the first set as Putintseva raced out to a 5-0 lead before Montgomery could get on the scoreboard. She ended the match with 30 unforced errors, twice as many as her opponent. Putintseva is a two-time French Open quarterfinalist who as a junior made the US Open girls' singles final.
"It was my first match in my first Slam so, yeah, there were some nerves," Montgomery said. "It’s not like I played bad, I was just playing a very experienced player."
Montgomery is one of 11 teenagers in the US Open, which includes fellow players born in 2004: Coco Gauff, who lost in the first round on Monday, and Montgomery’s best friend Katrina Scott, a wild card who plays Tuesday.
WHAT IT MEANS: Putintseva moves into the second round where she will face unseeded Vera Lapko of Belarus, a come-from-behind winner over Swiss player Viktorija Golubic. A potential third-round matchup could pit Putintseva against No. 12 seed Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic if the two were able to secure one more win each. The big-stage Slam experience will prove invaluable to a talented player like Montgomery. The loss means she'll now return back home to Washington, D.C., and concentrate on training at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md. She will await word on the USTA Pro Circuit and ITF tournament schedule for the remainder of the 2020 season.
MATCH POINT: Montgomery’s junior career was highlighted by leading the US junior Fed Cup team to a title in September, a prestigious Orange Bowl victory in December and a quarterfinal run at the Australian Open juniors to start the year. She parlayed that junior success into her first professional title in just her fourth pro event with an ITF $25,000 Futures title in Las Vegas before the COVID-19 shutdown. This will likely be the first of many Grand Slam appearances for the prodigious Montgomery.
