Bright and Rohrabacher, Waters and Parenteau set rematch for women's doubles crown
Anna Bright and Rachel Rohrabacher kept their bid for a second consecutive women’s doubles title alive with an 11-7, 11-2 victory over No. 9 seeds Jorja Johnson and Mari Humberg.
The No. 2 seeds are coming off their sixth title of the year in Atlanta, where they handed Anna Leigh Waters and Catherine Parenteau their second career loss as a pairing.
Bright says that consistency has been a key part of the tandem’s recent success.
“I think that we’re making some progress with raising our floor,” she mentioned. “We’ve been talking about that all year, and then our decision-making has also been sharp.”
One of the challenges on Saturday was overcoming the slice-centric game style of Humberg and Johnson, which isn’t seen too frequently on tour.
“It’s a very unique style,” Rohrabacher said. “I don’t think any other people play like them. We didn’t play spectacularly, but we played really smart pickleball with our adjustments to their game. We couldn’t just play our normal style, and we kind of had to start from Plan B.”
‘The Girlies’ will face Waters and Parenteau with a gold medal on the line.
Waters and Parenteau took the second women’s doubles semifinal over No. 4 seeds Callie Smith and Lea Jansen by an 11-5, 11-6 score line.
It was the second win of the day for the top seeds after defeating Parris Todd and Jade Kawamoto in the quarterfinals earlier this morning.
More impressively, it’s the fourth win of the day for Waters; she had an 8-0 game record through those matches and will play for her 29th career Triple Crown (ninth this year) on Championship Sunday.
This win sets up a rematch of the final from the CIBC Atlanta Slam a few weeks ago that should go down as one of the best women’s doubles matches of the year.
Let’s hope Sunday’s contest lives up to its predecessor.
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