You never forget your first: 18-year-old American Robin Montgomery scored the first WTA main-draw win of her career on Wednesday in Miami.
The left-hander, the 2021 US Open girls’ singles and doubles champion, outlasted Romanian veteran Ana Bogdan in the opening round in an even 2 hours, 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.
After dropping the opener, Montgomery was never broken again, and broken Bogdan's serve three times across the second and third sets. She served eight aces, overcame 10 double faults, and saved seven of the eight break points she faced.
Montgomery, ranked No. 193 in the WTA rankings, received a main-draw wild card to the WTA 1000 event, and beat a player ranked more than 130 places ahead of her in world No. 60 Bogdan. This is her seventh career WTA main draw appearance, and despite having previously gone 0-6 in WTA main draws, she had played three-setters in three of those matches.
The teenager will next face fellow American Madison Keys, the No. 19 seed ranked No. 21. Montgomery's only previous match against Top 20 (or Top 10) opposition came last October against then-No. 8 Coco Gauff in San Diego. Gauff won 6-3, 6-3—but it was the first time that Gauff played a player younger than her in a professional match.
Montgomery is a product of the famed Junior Tennis Champions Center (JTCC) in College Park, Md. that also trained Frances Tiafoe and Denis Kudla and the USTA Foundation Excellence Team, a program for high-achieving participants in National Junior Tennis and Learning (NJTL) chapters around the United States.
