Former Texas star Peyton Stearns is a work in progress, bows out of the ATX Open | Bohls

Peyton Stearns didn’t need to say it.

Her face and body language said it all.

And so did the scoreboard at Westwood Country Club that said the former Texas Longhorns great had fallen in the ATX Open 6-2, 4-6, 7-5 to unseeded Anna Karolina Schmiedlova in three sets Tuesday night.

In the first round, no less.

So, the question was asked of the former NCAA women’s singles tennis champion: was she more mad or disappointed about losing in her adopted hometown on the opening night of the singles draw?

“There’s a lot of emotions,” said a clearly distraught Stearns, who is ranked 61st in the world. “But when you lose a lot lately, it’s just another loss.”

Which is almost unquestionably a lie.

Not because the 22-year-old from Cincinnati was fibbing, but because she cares too much. This charismatic phenom never watched much tennis growing up in Ohio. She was always outside playing and has always described herself as a perfectionist.

As such, she may have wanted this win too badly and played uptight at times. Six of her last seven losses have come in three sets.

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“Sometimes, it’s not so easy to play at home,” said the 29-year-old Schmiedlova, who has won three WTA titles and reached the quarterfinals of the French Open last year before losing to Coco Gauff. “A player sometimes feels more pressure.”

Schmiedlova probably surprised herself a little bit. She’d never set foot in Austin before, had never played Stearns and was unaccustomed to this hard court as one who prefers clay. But after sampling downtown Austin with her father and practicing for four days here, she’s very mentally equipped and was more than content with her service and return games.

So, does she think she can win this tournament even though the last of her three WTA titles came in Bogota in 2018?

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said after a workout on a stationary bike following her grueling, 2½-hour match with Stearns. “I’m just happy with this win. We’ll see.”

ATX Open field is wide open, talented throughout

First things first. Her next match Thursday comes against unseeded American qualifier Sachia Vickery, whom she knows a little bit about.

“Yeah, I lost to her last week in Mexico,” she said with a chuckle. “In straight sets.”

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Yeah, the strength of this field is such that no one’s looking ahead very far.

Except for No. 3 and reigning U.S. Open champ Gauff, No. 5 Jessica Pegula and the injured Madison Keys, all the other top Americans are here. Stearns’ stay unfortunately was brief, save for her ongoing doubles pairing with new partner Sloane Stephens. Five of the seven Americans won their opening matches.

"I think American tennis is looking amazing," said television commentator Rennae Stubbs, who was a sensational doubles player on the WTA for 22 years. "But four different players won the four Grand Slams last year. Coco and Jessica Pegula are top five in the world. Madison's got to some quarterfinals in Grand Slams. Sloane is certainly a player who should have won a lot more. She's that good. And Coco will inspire even more Americans to do well."

Stearns among them.

“The depth of the women’s tour has really grown,” Stearns said. “And having a women’s pro event in Austin is just amazing.”

Texas' tennis coach: Stearns may be ahead of schedule

There’s little doubt that Stearns wanted to give back to a supportive crowd who showed up on this calm, cloudy evening. And the crowd wanted her to stick around, too.

“To have the local favorite go out in the first round always has some effect,” said tournament director Christo van Rensburg, the South African pro who was a doubles whiz and once beat Pete Sampras in straight sets at Wimbledon. “But we have such a strong field this year. We’ve got Anna Danilina, who won in the U.S. Open mixed doubles last year and Shuai Zhang, who was ranked No. 2 in the world in doubles last year.”

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But it’s difficult for anyone to figure out how to consistently navigate the wide-open tennis tournaments world-wide, now that Serena Williams has left the stage.

This year’s ATX Open offers a much stronger field than last year with strong players like Stephens and two-time NCAA singles champion Danielle Collins, who made it to the ATX semifinals last year, as well as top-seeded Anhelina Kalinina of Ukraine, who has been as high as 25th in the world and now is 35th.

But Stearns will figure it out.

So, does she ever think she might need a sports psychologist to get her back on track?

“I should,” she said.

The second-best match of the day might have involved the popular and perfectly named wild card Katie Volynets, who delighted the crowd with one 30-shot rally after another with Mexico’s powerful Renata Zarazua. When Volynets wasn’t spending part of her time in Austin as a passenger on the COTA track whizzing about the course at 180-mph, she was a rabbit on the Westwood court, running down one shot after another for a 6-4, 7-6 win.

“The women’s professional tennis tour is just brutal,” said Longhorns women’s coach Howard Joffe, Stearns’ former coach. “It’s almost laughable because it’s such a pressure cooker of stress. It’s set up just too hard for some mortals.”

He thinks it’s just a matter of time until the young woman everyone calls “P” breaks out for good.

“She’s done very well and is maybe ahead of schedule,” Joffe said. “When Roger Federer came up, he beat Sampras at Wimbledon, then had a sophomore slump and lost a ton of first rounds. Peyton is not the new kid on the block anymore, but her game and skill set are such that she could easily be a top-20 player.”

It’s just getting through the rough patches.

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Working on her game, Peyton Stearns forges ahead

Few would argue that women tennis players don't have more demands than the male pros do. Heck, 10 moms are pursuing their careers on tour, including three in this ATX field. Of the trio, Taylor Townsend won a three-setter Tuesday, and Anastasija Sevastova won in two, but Belgian mom Yanina Wickmayer fell in a three-hour match.

"They say pro tennis is like legal addiction," Stubbs said. "Your highs are amazing. The lows are really difficult to deal with. Peyton's a very good player. She's not a kid. But there are so many great players. They all have some down times, and it's a major learning experience."

The frustration of losing is clearly getting to Stearns early in her career despite some success.

So, what went wrong?

Was it more a mental hangup or something technique-wise that has her trending downward with a 1-6 singles record this year after some impressive tennis that included a Round-of-16 performance at the U.S. Open and a third-round run at the French Open?

To her credit, Stearns wasn’t trying to hide the dejection from getting broken in her final two service games and blowing a comfortable 5-3 lead in the final set before a packed house of more than 1,000 at Center Court. And she had the maturity to take tough questions from the media.

She was just simply lost. And hurt. And confused.

And given how public she was in her self-critical comments, it’s clear the frustration of the defeat was definitely weighing heavily on arguably the best women’s tennis player in Texas school history. Not that the fiery blonde who led the Longhorns to back-to-back national championships gave in.

She’s way too much of a warrior to ever do that.

“I think Peyton is uniquely suited to do well in this type of environment,” Joffe said. “She has a little bit of Teflon exterior with respect to stuff other people get affected by.”

The freshness of this defeat was just too raw.

After dropping the first set 6-2, Stearns came storming back, rooted on by the home crowd. She’d been rushing her shots and spraying even her normally reliable forehand all over the hard court. Meanwhile, the 29-year-old Slovakian was steady as ever and keeping relentless pressure on this transplanted Texan.

But Stearns stuck it out, breaking Schmiedlova twice to win the second set 6-4 and leading 5-3 by losing only three points on serve in her first four service games.

She just couldn’t close.

“Yeah, I think I blew the lead,” she said, “where better players would have capitalized on that.”

Stearns figures to be one of those better players in short order. But it can be difficult to get out of a rut sometimes.

And what exactly does she feel she needs to improve the most?

“I would say my brain,” she said. “I can be a little smarter out there. Maybe I should go back to school.”

ATX Open

Through Sunday, Westwood Country Club

First-round results: Singles — A. Sevastova def. J. Riera 6-4, 6-3; A. Kalinina def. S. Bejlek 6-3, 6-2; T. Townsend def. F. Contreras 3-6, 6-2, 6-3; E. Arango def. A. Parks 6-2, 6-3; S. Vickery def. R. Marino 6-2, 6-4; X. Wang def. N. Podoroska 7-5, 6-4; K. Rakhimova def. Y. Wickmayer 6-3, 6-7, 7-6; K. Volynets def. R. Zarazua 6-4, 7-6; S. Stephens def. T. Martincova 6-4, 6-0; D. Semenistaja def. V. Jimenez Kasintseva 6-7, 6-2, 6-4; C. Osorio def. A. Cornet 6-3, 6-2; A. Schmiedlova def. P. Stearns 6-2, 4-6, 7-5

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas tennis star Peyton Stearns loses in first round of ATX Open