Johnson siblings, Waters and Johns impress to make mixed doubles final
Jorja and JW Johnson took down No. 7 seeds Tina Pisnik and Dekel Bar 11-3, 11-6 in Saturday’s first mixed doubles semifinal.
The sibling duo made quick work of one of the best mixed teams on tour, showcasing more fast-paced play than we’re used to seeing from them.
“We’ve been working on speeding up more,” JW explained. “I felt like we were driving and crashing quite a bit in this match, which bodes well for us as we try and be more aggressive as a team.”
The No. 2 seeds have been in sharp form so far in Virginia Beach and have yet to drop a game through four matches.
They’ll look to carry that momentum into the final, where they’ll face Anna Leigh Waters and Ben Johns.
Waters and Johns took the second mixed doubles semifinal, coming away with an 11-6, 11-0 victory over No. 11 seeds Jackie Kawamoto and Riley Newman.
Kawamoto and Newman were fresh off of a wild quarterfinal victory over Catherine Parenteau and Christian Alshon where they saved a whopping ten match points, but the top seeds showed why they have twelve titles together so far this year with a dominant display.
Waters and Johns have won all eight matches against the Johnson siblings so far this year, but they have had to come back from the brink of defeat in some of those contests.
Johns is hoping to avoid a similar situation in Virginia Beach.
“I think it’s mostly about avoiding the mistakes of previous matches,” he explained. “I think we know what has caused them to get very close to beating us a number of times, and we’ve gotta be conscious of that. At the same time, you want to play your game because as not-the-favorites in their case, [JW and Jorja] are gonna have to come out with a little something different, so you want to play your game and apply pressure and see what they do before you adapt too much.”
We’ll see what matchup number nine of 2024 has in store on Sunday.
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