Kiki Bertens returns to Volvo Car Open fully established

On the final day of the Volvo Car Open last year, Kiki Bertens displayed all the elements necessary for one to be considered among the game’s best.

With the semifinals and championship match both slated for the same day due to rain, the Dutchwoman saved a match point against 2015 runner-up Madison Keys to advance to the final, where she routed Julia Goerges to claim the biggest title of her career.

Determined and dominant, Bertens’ performance that day would spur her on to what would become her best season as she finished the year in the top 10.

Now, as she returns to Charleston, S.C., as one of the top seeds, Bertens will look to replicate her run of the prior year on the surface she’s had most of her success.

The foundation of Bertens’ rise up the rankings was built on the clay, when she won her first tournament in Morocco back in 2012. She would experience some lean times over the next several years before entering the winners’ circle again, at the Nuremburg Cup in 2016. That was her first title with her countryman, Raemon Sluiter, as her coach. A former top-50 player on the ATP Tour, Sluiter helped Bertens build upon that win with a run to the semifinals at the French Open, which brought her into the world’s top 30 for the first time.

In 2017, she tacked on two more titles—both on clay—to her resume, but her singles ranking took a slight dip as she saw some struggles outside of those events. On the doubles court, though, she and partner Johanna Larsson posted the strongest results of their partnership, winning four titles and reaching the championship match at the last tournament of the year, the WTA Finals.

The momentum from that finish didn’t carry over into the early part of 2018 as she entered Charleston with a 4-7 record. Seeded 12th, Bertens breezed through her first three matches against lower-ranked opponents, and that form continued in the quarterfinals, where she posted her fourth straight-sets win in a row, this time over former world No. 11 Alize Cornet. The wins over Keys and Goerges followed, and at the end of it all, Bertens stood alone to bask in the accomplishment of her most impressive feat.

She soon followed that up with her first Premier Mandatory final in Madrid, but the French Open was a disappointment as she fell to Angelique Kerber in the third round. On the cusp of the top 20, Bertens broke through after her best performance at Wimbledon to date as she reached the quarterfinals. And during the second half of the season, she caught fire—winning the Premier 5 event in Cincinnati for her first hard-court title, adding another in Seoul after the US Open and reaching the semifinals at the WTA Finals in her singles debut.

Her 2019 to date has had its moments: Continuing her growth under different playing conditions, Bertens claimed her first indoor title in St. Petersburg, Russia, this year. And she’s just posted consecutive fourth-round finishes in Indian Wells, Calif, and Miami, falling to Garbine Muguruza and Ashleigh Barty, respectively, in hard-fought three-setters.

Now, as the tour turns to clay, the 27-year-old enters the Volvo Car Open in a different place from where she was a year ago. She’ll be considered one of the favorites for the title at a tournament that’s slated to include half of the world’s top 20, but as she demonstrated last year, she should be more than ready for the challenge.