Teenager Maaya Rajeshwaran takes on Robin Montgomery for a Chennai Open semi-final spot

Maaya Rajeshwaran Revathi walks on to Centre Court at the SDAT Tennis Stadium in Nungambakkam at 3 pm IST on Friday to play American Robin Montgomery for a place in the semi-finals of the Chennai Open, a WTA 250 event that ends on November 8.

The 17-year-old, ranked 669th in the world and playing on a wild card, is already the first Indian woman since Sania Mirza in 2012 to reach the quarter-finals of a WTA singles event. She is also the first Indian to reach the last eight of the Chennai Open.

How she got here

Maaya opened with a win over world No. 115 Katarzyna Kawa of Poland. On Wednesday she beat another Pole, the qualifier Weronika Falkowska, ranked 277th, 6-4, 6-3. She trailed 2-4 in the first set before winning four games in a row, sealing it with a volley. In the second she served for the match at 5-3 and took it on her third match point, with three aces in the set.

“It definitely feels so good after the win,” she said afterwards. “Coming in as a wild card, I felt I had nothing to lose. I just wanted to play my best tennis and give it my all.”

A fast rise

The Chennai run follows a breakthrough October. Maaya won her first professional singles title at a W35 event in Lagos, Portugal, coming through qualifying without dropping a set, and also took the doubles title there with Ukraine’s Yelyzaveta Kotliar.

A win against Montgomery would put her in a WTA semi-final, a stage no Indian woman has reached since Mirza’s run in Osaka in 2009.