Before playing a single college match together, the fifth-year senior duo Taylor Bridges and Ena Babic already had high expectations, coming in at No. 51 in the ITA Doubles Preseason Rankings. Bridges has also been ranked multiple years in a row in singles and came in at No. 43, and Babic has the potential to crack the rankings too if she continues to play how she did in her LSU debut.
That debut came last weekend at an invitational hosted by one of the best teams in the country in North Carolina. This event featured a lot of positives from multiple members of the squad, including Safiya Carrington, Nina Geissler, Mia Rabinowitz and of course, Taylor Bridges and Ena Babic.
Right out the gate, the tournament tested them, with their first doubles opponent being No. 59 Miska Kadleckova and Sofia Cabezas out of Iowa State. It wasn’t an easy match to say the least, and by the 11th game, they were in a stalemate at 5-5.
The Tigers would prevail though, winning the last two games on their way to a 7-5 victory and Bridges and Babic’s first ranked win of the season. That is a great sign for the team, as this duo will likely take Court One for LSU, and that means they are expected to hold their own against the best duos each team they play has to offer.
They would ultimately conclude the event with a 2-1 doubles record, winning their next match easily before roughly losing to Kansas’ Malkia Ngounoue and Mariana Velasquez. Both players felt good about their debut as a duo, with Babic being grateful to have Bridges as a duo, and Bridges believing that every match they play together is beneficial.
“It was nice because we played together over the summer, so we had had already had time to get used to playing with each other and learning how to communicate best together,” Bridges stated. “[These matches are] just going to help us moving forward as a team.”
Both players would impress on the other side of the event as well, each picking up wins in their first singles matches. Bridges would only surrender two games in her match while Babic would shut her opponent out in the first set before finishing off her opponent in a closer second one.
The players started out with even singles slates, but by the end of the event, it was actually the unranked Babic that would have a more impressive 2021-22 singles debut. She would win her first two matches before her first and only loss, and one of those wins was against No. 36 Yuliia Starodubtseva out of Old Dominion.
Her only loss would come against No. 88 Reilly Tran and she would bounce back from that loss in her final match of the invitational and pick up another ranked win in the process. That win would come against No. 68 Malkia Ngounoue, who had been a part of the duo that defeated Babic and Bridges earlier in the event.
Babic was excited about her play and enjoyed her debut with the team, believing that the experience was both fun and beneficial.
“Honestly, I was a bit nervous because we didn’t play for so long,” Babic said. “I just wanted to enjoy every match and many of those actually ended up [going] pretty well.”
The duo looked great both individually and in doubles throughout the entire event and will get another chance to further prove themselves this week. They will be representing LSU at the 2021 ITA Women’s All-American Championships in Charleston, South Carolina, starting on Monday.
