Sport : Tennis

Wild-card spots for US pair

17th December 2012, 08:35am

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Madison Keys: Will play at next month's Australian Open

Madison Keys: Will play at next month's Australian Open

Americans Madison Keys and Rhyne Williams claimed wild cards for next month's Australian Open on Sunday.

The duo won their respective finals at the USTA's wild-card play-offs in the state of Georgia.

Seventeen-year-old Keys won the play-off tournament for a second successive year to book her ticket to Melbourne.

Keys, world number 137, beat Mallory Burdette 7-5 6-3, telling the official USTA website afterwards: "I'm pretty happy with how I've been doing and how I've been playing. Hopefully I can just really keep it up now.

"It'd be great to go to Australia and not get (beaten) in the first round this year. Hopefully that happens. But I'm just really excited to go down and start playing some tournaments again."

In the men's final, Williams defeated top seed Tim Smyczek 7-6 (7/4) 5-7 6-3 6-3.

The 21-year-old victor, 190th in the ATP rankings, said: "I'm moving incredibly well, and when I'm moving my best I feel like I give myself a really good chance of winning, and I feel like I could play with anyone.

"Tim, he's been playing incredible to end the year. He beat me the last two times, and I woke up this morning and just told myself I was going to try to give myself the best chance to win.

"Everything just kind of came together, and I played some of the best tennis I've ever played."

The beaten Smyczek will now try to qualify for the main draw in Melbourne the week before the tournament gets under way. It does so on January 14.


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