Catherine Parenteau and Christian Alshon competing in mixed doubles at the Veolia Bristol Open.
Catherine Parenteau and Christian Alshon competing in mixed doubles at the Veolia Bristol Open. PPA Tour

Parenteau, Alshon overcome slow start, surge into mixed doubles semis

Catherine Parenteau/Christian Alshon may have ended their quarterfinal match against Parris Todd/Hayden Patriquin with a 13-11, 12-10 win, but things didn’t look good to start.

Eight minutes into the contest, the No. 3 seeds found themselves trailing 1-7 with all the momentum on the side of their opponents.

ADVERTISEMENT

19 minutes—and one game point saved—later, Parenteau/Alshon closed out the first game by a 13-11 score line.

Game 2 was close pretty much the whole way through, before some impressive hands battle performances down the stretch helped Parenteau/Alshon survive the second game after saving another game point.

 

Parenteau credited the team’s strategic use of timeouts for helping close out two challenging opponents.

“I think we did a good job with our timeouts,” she mentioned. “I felt like we communicated really well and stayed positive in big moments. Hayden and Parris have been playing some really good doubles lately, so we knew it was going to be tough, but it really came down to just trusting each other.”

With this result, Alshon is now 2/2 in making semifinal this week in Bristol after defeating No. 2 seed Hunter Johnson in the men’s singles quarterfinals.

He’s not playing men’s doubles, so we’ll next see him in action on Semifinal Saturday, where he and Parenteau will face top seeds Anna Leigh Waters/Ben Johns.