Nearly a month-and-a-half after deciding to leave Duke in search of a career on the Women's Tennis Association tour, Ansley Cargill qualified for and competed in the 2001 U.S. Open Monday.
The 19-year-old lefthander fought tooth-and-nail with crafty veteran Ai Sugiyama in the first round of the Open Monday afternoon before falling to the world's 39th-ranked player, 7-6 (7-4), 6-3, at the U.S. Tennis Center in Flushing, N.Y. Sugiyama will move on to face 20th-seeded Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, who disposed of Petra Mandula in three sets during yesterday's action.
Despite losing in the opening round of the Open for the second consecutive year, Cargill was pleased with her performance against Sugiyama, who has 10 more years of professional experience than Cargill and has been ranked as high as the No. 1 doubles player in the world.
"I think she was just a little bit more experienced than I was at this moment," Cargill said. "She was ranked No. 1 in the world in doubles, she's been in the top-15 in singles and she's been playing for a decade or so. I knew she would be a solid player, so it was a good opportunity to go out and play her."
Even though Cargill valued the chance to compete against one of the game's best players, it was the Atlanta, Ga., native who impressed the U.S. Tennis Center patrons at times with her solid grasp of the game. Sugiyama's straight-set victory was hardly representative of the competitiveness of the match, as the Kanagawa, Japan native only won ten more points than Cargill and actually had a lower first-serve percentage than the recent Duke departee. However, after Sugiyama was able to pull out the first-set tiebreaker by a razor-thin margin, she gained a mental advantage over Cargill.
"I didn't lose steam so much, but she gained confidence after I lost the first-set tiebreaker," Cargill said. "I started missing some critical service returns which gave her more leeway in hitting her first serve. She was missing a number of first serves in the first set, so once her first serve started going in during the second set, she gained a lot more confidence."
Although Cargill will have to wait until January to compete in her next Grand Slam singles event, she has enjoyed her time on the tour over the past three months and has few regrets about her decision to leave the Gothic Wonderland. She feels that the time she now has to work on the different aspects of the game, such as her footwork and her conditioning, has translated into greater success in the nine tournaments she entered since the start of the summer.
In fact, Cargill's strong showing in her preliminary tournaments allowed her to garner enough points to be a candidate for a bid to the U.S. Open, an opportunity which the USTA eventually granted her.
"I'm pretty excited about what I'm going to be doing over the next year," Cargill said. "To be able to experience the tour is something that very few people are able to do. But at the same time, I know that the classes are starting at Duke and I had a great time playing on the team. I had great relationships with the girls on the team and Jamie [Ashworth] was a great coach. I'm feeling a little bit nostalgic, but I'm also excited to be able to go and play for a year or so to improve myself and see how far I can get in this sport that I've been training for all my life."
Cargill will return to the court Wednesday in doubles action, when she and partner Laura Granville will face Meghan Shaughnessy and Justine Henin in a first-round matchup.
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