Ever since Alexis Gordon turned pro in January, she and her coach/boyfriend Michael King have had one goal in mind.

When told that she would be playing Alexis Gordon today in the final of the Boyd Tinsley USTA Women’s Pro Tennis Championships, Olga Puchkova sounded confused.

Her suitcase was packed with two types of clothes: those to play tennis in and those to hit the town in. That was the original plan when Bethanie Mattek went to the Australian Open in 2004.

Attention University of Virginia athletes (male ones): Olga Puchkova would love an autographed jersey. Puchkova, the No. 2 seed at this week’s Boyd Tinsley USTA Women’s Pro Tennis Championships, is an avid collector.

At one point or another, every player in the field at the Boyd Tinsley USTA Women’s Pro Tennis Championships made a life-changing decision. Essentially, Kimberly Couts made her career choice at the ripe age of 7.

“The head coach at Cal…it was a bunch of [bleep],” Alexandra Podkolzina said. “I’m not going to go into it, but it’s the best school. It’s the No. 1 public school in the country.”

A decade ago, the knee injury that all athletes dreaded was the torn anterior cruciate ligament. Today, it’s been replaced by a scarier one — an injury that requires microfracture surgery.

She first came to Charlottesville as a fragile teenager forced to grow up by seeking her fortune as a budding international tennis player. At 14, Varvara Lepchenko and her father came to the U.S. to seek political asylum and to make a living playing tennis. They left behind their country, war-strifed Uzbekistan, which was plagued by civil conflict. They also left behind Lepchenko’s mother.