Barranquilla, 9 September: Jeanjean owes Pareja a rematch, and Claire Liu meets a 40-year-old lefty

The second round in Barranquilla is only three matches long, which is a mercy — it means each one can be looked at properly. All three start together on an outdoor hard court in September humidity, where the ball sits up a fraction and the player who takes it earliest usually decides how the rally goes. There is a rematch with real history in it, an all-American meeting between a 40-year-old left-hander and a player rebuilding her belief, and one straightforward fitness question after a nearly three-hour opener.

What links them is timing, in both senses: who strikes first in the rally, and who has recovered from what they did two days ago. Here are the three I want to talk through:

• 18:30 — Jeanjean — Pareja
• 18:30 — Lepchenko — Liu
• 18:30 — Hibino — Tikhonova

Times are UTC.

Leolia Jeanjean — Julieta Pareja

They have met once, and Jeanjean will not have forgotten it: 7-6(5) 6-3 to Pareja in the Bogota quarterfinals in April last year, on clay, when the American was still a name most people were reading for the first time. That is the whole intrigue in one line. Pareja, 17 and ranked outside the top 280, has already beaten this opponent by refusing to play carefully, and Jeanjean, 31 and the higher-ranked of the two at No. 127, now has to solve a player she can actually scout.

Jeanjean arrives with the better recent memories. She came through Arantxa Rus at the US Open 7-6(6) 6-2, handling a long stoppage without losing her thread — "There are many distractions at the US Open; staying focused is not easy," she said afterwards (Eurosport) — then pushed Anastasia Potapova to a third set before running out of authority. Her opener here, 6-2 7-6(3) over Carolina Meligeni Alves, told the same story: clean while she dictated, distinctly less comfortable once the rallies stretched. Her hard-court season, 9-13, is the weakest part of her year.

Pareja's summer, on the other hand, has the texture of a player growing in public. She beat Kayla Day 6-3 6-1 and Iryna Shymanovich 6-4 6-2 in US Open qualifying before Lucrezia Stefanini stopped her one win short, and in her Barranquilla opener she nearly gave away a large lead against Lizette Cabrera and then did not panic — she reset, closed the set and finished stronger than she started. She calls herself "just a public parks kid from Carlsbad" (USTA), which is charming and also slightly misleading: the forehand is tour-standard already. Neither player is carrying a reported injury; Pareja simply spent close to two hours on court.

The key is whether Jeanjean can keep the ball out of Pareja's strike zone without backing up so far that she hands over the middle of the court. Jeanjean does not blow anyone off the court with pace, and that is exactly the ball Pareja likes. The bookmakers have made the 17-year-old the favourite at 1.65 against Jeanjean's 2.108, which for a player ranked No. 288 tells you what the market thinks of her trajectory.

I lean slightly with the market, and I admit I am uneasy about it. Pareja starting sharply is the likeliest route to a two-set win, but Jeanjean's problem-solving keeps this live, and if the first set goes long the total of 21.5 games looks beatable. This is the one match of the three I would not try to call flat.

Varvara Lepchenko — Claire Liu

Two Americans, fourteen years apart, and a head-to-head split down the middle: Lepchenko won a W25 final in Boca Raton in 2021, 3-6 6-4 6-0, and Liu took their Puerto Vallarta meeting in February 2024, 6-3 1-6 7-5, both on hard. Neither result settles anything. What they do suggest is that these two make each other work for three sets.

Lepchenko, 40 and left-handed, has already done the heavy lifting this week. Her 7-6(1) 6-1 over Katrina Scott hid more than two hours of hold-after-hold tension before she seized the tie-break and Scott's resistance quietly collapsed. She has been a good citizen of this tournament over the years — six wins against two losses here — but her 2026 hard-court ledger of 5-8 includes losses to Gabriela Knutson and Alina Korneeva that were not close.

Liu, at No. 94 comfortably the highest-ranked player in this round, is the more complete mover and the cleaner striker off both wings. Her US Open qualifying loss to Heather Watson, 6-4 2-6 4-6, was the old problem in miniature: she recovered a late break in the decider and then gave the initiative straight back. Against Xiaodi You she did the opposite — took a tight first set 7-5 and then swept the second 6-0 without letting the match breathe again. She has spoken about trying to "have more trust and confidence in myself" (WTA) after a difficult stretch, and that second set looked like the version she means.

Lepchenko's only road in is disruption: the left-handed crosscourt forehand into Liu's backhand, low balls, awkward heights, and a match made of long service games where a 40-year-old's competitive nous counts. Liu's road is simpler — take the ball earlier, play forward, and not start watching the scoreboard.

Nao Hibino — Anastasia Tikhonova

This is the freshness match. Hibino, 31, needed just over an hour to beat María Camila Torres Murcia 6-4 6-1, taking away her time gradually and then accelerating instead of coasting. Tikhonova, 25, spent close to three hours getting past Darja Semenistaja 6-4 4-6 7-5, which is the best win of the round by ranking — Semenistaja sits at No. 109 — and also the most expensive.

The numbers point one way. Hibino has played 32 hard-court matches this season and won 18 of them, and her compact strokes and early contact suit a court where she can borrow pace rather than generate it. Tikhonova's hard-court year is a thin 2-4, and most of her better recent work came on clay and in doubles; her losses to Nastasja Schunk and Ruth Roura were both one-sided. There is no head-to-head to lean on, and no injury reported on either side — the question with Tikhonova is purely how much of that decider is still in her legs.

Her way in is the return game. If she can put Hibino's serve under pressure from the first game, she stops the Japanese player from settling into the tidy, repetitive rhythm she enjoyed on Monday. The warning signs, if the fatigue is real, will be small: shorter adjustment steps, and a rush to end rallies before they are ready to be ended.

Pareja's second chance and Liu's steadiness: the questions Barranquilla answers tonight

The day turns on two things. Whether a 17-year-old can beat the same opponent twice, now that the surprise is gone — and whether Claire Liu can carry the calm of that 6-0 set into a match against someone who will make her play awkward balls for two hours. Tikhonova's legs are the third question, and the quietest one, because fatigue rarely announces itself until the second set.

My own leans are above, softly held. The AI cappers get specific on each match page, and their picks are where the numbers turn into actual positions — I am content to sit with the stories and see which of them the court agrees with.