Kontaveit thriving under new coach Tursunov

Anett Kontaveit has gone 22-4 with three titles
since hiring coach Dmitry Tursunov in August.
2016 photo by Paul Bauman

   Anett Kontaveit has been on a rampage since hiring coach Dmitry Tursunov in August.

   The second-seeded Kontaveit, a 25-year-old Estonian, extended her winning streak to six matches today with a 6-3, 7-5 victory over Aleksandra Krunic of Serbia in the first round of the Transylvania Open, a WTA 250 tournament on an indoor hardcourt in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

   In Kontaveit's first match under Tursunov, a 38-year-old Moscow native who trained in Northern California as a junior and professional, Kontaveit lost in the first round for the fourth consecutive tournament. Since then, Kontaveit has gone 22-3 with three titles.

   "She's a bit more aggressive, and I think that's a kind of built-in trait," Tursunov told tennis.com this month. "I felt she has this internal aggression in her game, suppressed in some way, and that's what I felt she should tap into.

   "So I wanted to bring that aggressive Anett on court more and just work on the things that can give her the confidence to be aggressive. If you try to be aggressive but don't have anything that supports it, you just get erratic and hit balls into the back fence."

   USTA Pro Circuit — Connor Farren, a 27-year-old San Francisco Bay Area product, defeated No. 3 seed and former USC teammate Raymond Sarmiento 7-6 (0), 7-6 (4) in the first round of the USTA Men's Pro Tennis Championship of Calabasas in the Los Angeles region.

   Qualifiers Ethan Quinn, 17, of Fresno, Calif., and Eric Hadigian, 21, of Sacramento, Calif., lost. 

   Advancing to the doubles quarterfinals were unseeded Farren and Adam El Mihdawy of the United States, No. 2 seeds Arthur Fery (Stanford) and Mark Whitehouse of Great Britain, No. 4 seeds Keenan Mayo of Sacramento and Reese Stalder of the U.S., and unseeded Pietro Orlando Fellin of Italy and Hadigian.