Elani And Lume Landman Triumph At NYC Open By Rob Dinerman Dateline October 24th, 2023---
Jolted by a rare first-round defeat at the season-opening SDA tour stop
in Philadelphia earlier this month, and pushed to a fifth game in their
semifinal match Sunday afternoon, second seeds Elani and Lume Landman
responded like champions by winning that fifth game 15-9 and then
conjuring up quite possibly the best performance of their doubles
careers Monday evening in a 15-13, 14 and 6 final-round win over top
seeds Kayley Leonard and Maria Elena Ubina to capture the NYC Open at
the University Club of New York. The Landman twins thereby defended the
NYC Open title they had won in 2022 (in which they recorded their only
prior win over Leonard and Ubina, who had defeated them in the 2021 NYC
Open final) and re-established themselves as one of the top teams on
the SDA women’s professional doubles tour.
Both finalists had to repulse strong
challenges in their respective five-game semifinal matches. The
Landmans outlasted Katie Tutrone and Vic SImmonds, while Leonard and
Ubina, who had won the season-opening tournament in Philadelphia with a
final-round win over Nikki Todd and Suzie Pierrepont, this time lost
the fourth game of their match with Pierrepont and Gina Stoker before
asserting themselves in the 15-6 fifth. They then fell behind 7-2 in
the first game of last night’s final --- largely due to three nearly
consecutive forehand reverse-corner winners by Lume Landman --- and
never quite made up the deficit, although they did save two game balls
to get to 13-14 before Lume Landman knifed a tight backhand
reverse-corner winner (not an easy shot for a right-wall player to
execute) to seal that game.
The second game featured wonderful
all-court play on the part of both teams. Ubina’s remarkable ability to
choose exactly the right shot when she has an opening was on full
display, and Leonard scored on a number of forehand cross-court drop
shots. But the Landmans matched them point for point, showing an
improved “team defense” in the way they covered for each other and
finding a number of point-winning nicks of their own. The 14-all point
had even more of a match-defining feel to it than normal, since Leonard
and Ubina have a history of winning those points, and the Landmans had
played too well throughout those two games to afford only coming away
with a one-all tie. After a lengthy and intense exchange, Lume Landman,
rather than trying to pass Leonard with a wide forehand cross-court,
instead intentionally hit a cross-court that hit the left side wall
early and broke treacherously across Leonard’s body at too severe an
angle to be returned.
Buoyed by the two-games-to-love lead they
now enjoyed, the Landmans broke the third game open with a five-point
run from 4-all, part of an 11-2 sprint to the finish line. It was a
rare moment when the usually unflappable Leonard/Ubina pair, which has
dominated women’s pro doubles during each of the past two years, were
unable to respond to their opponents’ hot streak and faded somewhat in
the last game. Although the Landmans hit a number of outright winners,
this match was really won “in the trenches” by their ability to absorb
whatever salvos were thrown at them and dish out some responding
punishment of their own. As has always been the case when these two
teams face each other, many of the points involved extended cross-court
exchanges between Leonard and Lume Landman, who was in attack mode all
night (beginning with that string of reverse-corner winners out of the
gate) and visibly fired up. She and her sister won most of the
all-court “scramble points” and were carrying the play throughout the
evening. For all that, the first two games were decided by a total of
three points in a match that creates an intriguing competitive backdrop
ahead of the next women’s SDA event in just two weeks at Heights Casino
on the first weekend of November.
