{"id":13345,"date":"2017-09-08T09:22:30","date_gmt":"2017-09-08T14:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/myboysay.com\/blog\/?p=13345"},"modified":"2017-09-08T13:50:42","modified_gmt":"2017-09-08T18:50:42","slug":"the-future-of-american-tennis-is-in-great-hands-as-sloane-stephens-and-madison-keys-face-off-for-the-first-all-american-u-s-open-final-since-2002","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myboysay.com\/blog\/?p=13345","title":{"rendered":"VYING TO BE THE FUTURE GOAT OF AMERICAN TENNIS, THE FUTURE STARS, “SLOANE STEPHENS” AND “MADISON KEYS”, FACE OFF FOR THE FIRST ALL-AMERICAN U.S. OPEN FINAL SINCE 2002"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Sloane Stephens @SloaneStephens and Madison Keys @Madison_Keys , “BEST FRIENDS ON THE COURT”, \u00a0will face off for the first all-American U.S. Open final since 2002 on Saturday at Flushing Meadows in New York.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unseeded Stephens downed the great\u00a0Venus Williams<\/a> in three sets in the semi-finals, while Keys demolished CoCo Vandeweghe 6-1, 6-2, in just over an hour.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Neither player has taken part in a Grand Slam final before, so pressure could play a key role, with No. 15 seed Keys a slight favorite to claim glory, with Sloane Stephens maybe changing those odds within the next 24hrs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The match is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. ET\/9 p.m. BST and will be broadcast live in the United States on ESPN and in the United Kingdom on Eurosport 1.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sloane Stephens (born March 20, 1993) is an American tennis<\/a> player. She has won four singles titles on the WTA Tour since playing as a professional.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Following a successful 2012 season<\/a> in which she first reached the second week of a Grand Slam, she rose to prominence upon reaching the semifinals of the 2013 Australian Open<\/a>, notably defeating Serena Williams<\/a> en route. Since then, she has reached a career-high singles ranking of 11 in the world and claimed her first WTA title at the\u00a02015 Citi Open<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Stephens was born in Plantation, Florida<\/a> to Sybil Smith (who, in 1988 as a swimmer at Boston University<\/a>, became the first African-American female to be named First Team All-American in Division I history) and John Stephens<\/a>, a “First Round Pick” Of The New England Patriots, an NFL OFFENSIVE ROOKIE OF THE YEAR (1988), and ALL PRO 1988 PRO BOWL SELECTION.<\/strong><\/p>\n

She has cited <\/span>Venus Williams<\/a> and <\/span>Serena Williams<\/a> as her main inspirations in tennis. She also cited her grandfather as her biggest influence growing up.\u00a0<\/span>She started playing tennis at the age of nine, at the Sierra Sport and Racquet Club, in <\/span>Fresno, California<\/a>, where her mother and stepfather introduced her to the sport.<\/span><\/sup>\u00a0 After reaching the age of 12, Stephens stepped up her training once again by joining the Nick Saviano High Performance Tennis Academy, and switching to online-based home-schooling, which allowed her to maximize her time spent on the court.<\/span><\/sup>\u00a0 She graduated from high school in 2011.<\/span><\/sup> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Stephens currently splits time between her home in Florida and Los Angeles, where she trains at the USTA training center at the StubHub Center in <\/span>Carson, California<\/a>. She stated that her favorite surface is clay when she entered the <\/span>2012 Wimbledon Championships<\/a>. Her father, a\u00a0<\/span>Professional American Football Player,\u00a0John Stephens was killed in a car accident on September 1, 2009, just before the start of the US Open<\/a>. Stephens attended her father’s funeral in Louisiana, but remained entered in the US Open<\/a>. Stephens’ younger brother, Shawn Farrell, plays baseball and football at Notre Dame High School in Los Angeles.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Madison Keys (born February 17, 1995) is an American professional tennis<\/a> player. She has won three WTA Premier\u00a0<\/a>tournaments, and is the first American woman to debut in the top 10 since Serena Williams<\/a> in 1999, seventeen years earlier.[1]<\/a><\/sup> As of September 2017, she was ranked world no. 16 in singles and was the third-highest ranked American player overall behind Venus and Serena Williams.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Madison Keys is one of the youngest tennis players to win a match on the WTA Tour, at the age of 14 years and 48 days, by beating world No. 81\u00a0Alla Kudryavtseva<\/a> on the clay courts at the 2009 MPS Group Championships<\/a> in her home state of Florida.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Keys’ passion for tennis started at a young age while growing up in the Quad Cities. She first became interested in tennis because she liked Venus Williams’ white tennis dress, according to a video interview she conducted with World Tennis Magazine<\/i> in August 2011. Her parents are Rick and Christine (attorneys), and her siblings are Sydney, Montana, and Hunter.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/sup>Keys is currently endorsed by Wilson and Nike. In 2016, she signed on to be the ambassador of FearlesslyGIRL.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Keys recently became the new ambassador for Evian and is the first American tennis player to be sponsored by them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

CONGRATULATIONS TO BOTH SLOANE AND MADISON, AND THE MYBOYSAY GLOBAL NATION OF TENNIS ENTHUSIASTS WISH THEM THE BESTS IN THEIR U.S. OPEN FINALS MATCH.<\/strong><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sloane Stephens @SloaneStephens and Madison Keys @Madison_Keys , “BEST FRIENDS ON THE COURT”, \u00a0will face off for the first all-American U.S. Open final since 2002 on Saturday at Flushing Meadows in New York. Unseeded Stephens downed the great\u00a0Venus Williams in three sets in the semi-finals, while Keys demolished CoCo Vandeweghe 6-1, 6-2, in just over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,1314,1456,1156,13,14,1,7,17,9,10],"tags":[2005,2003,2008,2007,2004,670,2006],"class_list":["post-13345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-entertainment","category-global-business-entrepreneurs","category-global-news-updates-and-more","category-global-sports","category-health","category-most-commented","category-news","category-sports","category-tennis","category-us","category-world","tag-madison_keys","tag-sloanestephens","tag-usopen","tag-fut","tag-madison-keys","tag-sloane-stephens","tag-u-s-open-2017","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myboysay.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myboysay.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myboysay.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myboysay.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myboysay.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/myboysay.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myboysay.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myboysay.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myboysay.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myboysay.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}