Britain take lead at Maureen Connolly Trophy
Britain take lead at Maureen Connolly Trophy | 
Great Britain’s 18-and-under girl’s team established a commanding four rubbers to two lead over the USA after day one at the Maureen Connolly Challenge Trophy.
Playing No.1 for Great Britain, Laura Robson had to fight hard to overcome USA No.2 Ester Goldfeld, recovering from a slow start to run out a 4-6 6-3 6-2 winner.
Robson said she loved playing for Great Britain. “I’ve always enjoyed playing team events,” said Robson. “It’s good to get some grass court matches in before Wimbledon and we really do want to win the trophy this time around.”
Tara Moore, playing No.2 for the British team, also had a struggle before prevailing over the USA’s No.1 Sloane Stephens 7-5 3-6 6-1 before combining with Robson to defeat Goldfeld and Chanelle Van Nguyen 6-2 3-6 6-4.
Moore was delighted to extend her team’s lead with victory in the doubles. “It’s really good that we held the doubles together,” said Moore. “We combined very well together and hopefully tomorrow we can keep it up.”
Lucy Brown, Britain’s No.3 team member beat USA No.4 Grace Min 6-4 6-1 while USA No.3 Channelle Van Nguyen beat the home team’s youngest member Eleanor Dean, 6-4 6-2. Min and Stephens later combined to take out a hard-fought doubles rubber 3-6 7-6(5) 7-5.
Van Nguyen said she was confident her team would claw back vital rubbers on day two’s four singles matches. “We demonstrated today that we can win on this surface and that won’t change,” said Van Nguyen. “I hope we can do it again tomorrow.”
And Stephens said the US team was feeling positive going into the second day’s play. “We feel good, it’s 2-4 now so we’re only a couple of singles behind,” said 17-year-old Stephens. “We didn’t play our best today but tomorrow we will be better and overall we’re happy.”
Claire Curran, co-coach with Ian Bates for Great Britain, said she couldn’t have hoped for a better start to this year’s Maureen Connolly Challenge Trophy.
“To go into day two with a 4-2 lead is fantastic start, brilliant,” said Curran. “All the girls played very, very well and competed well as a team.”
Sarah Taylor, co-coach with Roger Smith for the USA, was confident her team would fight back on day two. “We’re just going to take it one point at a time because if you think about winning all four rubbers you just dig a hole for yourself,” said Taylor. “We’ll take what we learned today. All credit to Great Britain, the girls played really great tennis today and we’ll just have to build on today’s results tomorrow.”
Day two at the Maureen Connolly Challenge Trophy sees four singles matches played on Court No.2 from 11 am, with two doubles rubbers rounding out the action at Devonshire Park on Saturday.
Topics: Bates, Challenge Trophy, Chanelle, Channelle, Claire Curran, Dean, Eleanor, Grass Court, Great Britain, Lucy Brown, Maureen Connolly, Robson, Rubbers, Sloane, Struggle, Tara Moore, Team Member, Van Nguyen, Victory, Wimbledon
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