A long wait ended for Taylor Townsend on Thursday afternoon, thanks to a game plan from an era considered long gone.
Attacking with serve-and-volley as well as chip-and-charge, the 116th-ranked Townsend flummoxed the reigning Wimbledon champion, Simona Halep, in the second round of the United States Open and finished with a tight 2-6, 6-3, 7-6 (4) victory.
Townsend, 23, charged the net fearlessly, particularly in the third set, when she came forward 64 times, and her bold gambits thrilled the crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Halep, seeded fourth, had beaten Townsend in all three previous meetings, but she had never encountered a game like the one she faced on Thursday.
“I never played with someone coming so often to the net,” Halep, 27, said after the match.
Fans applauded after the match when the on-court interviewer, Rennae Stubbs, said that Townsend had gone to the net more than 100 times. (The official statistics showed 106 net approaches for Townsend, compared with 10 for Halep).
“I knew that I’m not going to beat her from the baseline,” Townsend told Stubbs. “I knew that I had to do something to give me an edge.”
Townsend broke Halep for a 3-2 lead in the third set, then held twice to put herself a game from victory. She had two match points at 5-4. Townsend double faulted on the first, and Halep saved the second with a backhand passing shot winner.
Halep then broke, held, and had a match point on Townsend’s serve at 6-5, but missed her return long. Townsend won the ensuing tie-breaker, serve-and-volleying on every point. She finished with a deep forehand volley cross court into Halep’s backhand, which the Romanian could not send back. As the ball sank into the net, Townsend’s arms flew up in triumph.
“This means a lot,” Townsend said in her on-court interview, fighting back tears. “It’s been a long journey.”
Townsend, a Chicago native who trains in Atlanta, has been touted since winning the 2012 Australian Open junior title as a 15-year-old. But her path was bumpy: Officials at the U.S. Tennis Association refused to cover her travel expenses for the 2012 U.S. Open because they thought she was too heavy to compete, which resulted in an uproar from the news media and continued scrutiny of her physique.
Townsend made her Grand Slam debut at the French Open the next year and reached the third round. She did not win another second-round match at a Grand Slam until Thursday, more than six years later.
To reach the main draw here this year, Townsend had to play through the qualifying draw, which she said lit a fire under her.
“It’s been a long road, a lot of haters, a lot of people who weren’t sure,” she said. “I’ve heard it for a really long time that I was never going to make it, that I wasn’t going to be able to break through or do this or do that.”
Townsend said that she had learned to embrace “being able to prove people wrong,” and that she had needed time to mature and become comfortable with herself.
“Some of you guys I’ve known literally since I was 15, 16 years old,” she said as she scanned a room of reporters after her win. “It’s insane. But it’s just growth as a person. I think that’s the beauty of this sport, that you can watch people from such a young age kind of develop as people and players.”
Townsend said beating Halep “was a very defining moment for me, to realize that I belong here.”
Townsend has struggled to use her unusually multifaceted game in a way that would allow her to consistently play top-flight tennis. She grew up watching old footage of a fellow lefty, Martina Navratilova, and tilted her game more toward the net than anyone else would even consider in the sport these days.
On Thursday, she said, she took the strategy farther than she had ever dared before. The gamble paid off: Townsend finally beat a top-10 opponent on her 11th try.
“I think it was really great confirmation that this style of play works, that I can continue to do it,” Townsend said.
Halep, who had lost in the first round of the U.S. Open in each of the previous two years, said the second round loss was “not a drama” and praised Townsend.
“She really deserved to win it because she gave everything and she didn’t think of losing,” Halep said. “She went all the way, with 100 percent belief.”
