The Bell Challenge is a WTA Tour Tier III tennis tournament held in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada since 1993. The tournament is played on indoor hardcourts.
In 1997, Dutchwoman Brenda Schultz-McCarthy defeated Belgian Dominique Van Roost 6-4, 6-7(4), 7-5, and the following year, American Tara Snyder won her first WTA Tour title with a hard fought 4-6, 6-4, 7-6(6) victory over fellow American and former top 10 player Chanda Rubin. Snyder saved two match points during the match. In 2006, top-seed and 2007 Wimbledon finalist Marion Bartoli of France defeated Russian Olga Poutchkova 6-0, 6-0, the first double bagel in a WTA Tour final for 13 years.
Players who have won the event and gone on to win Grand Slam titles include 1999 champion Jennifer Capriati and 2003 champion Maria Sharapova, who both went on to become World No. 1.
American Lindsay Davenport, a three-time Grand Slam champion, won the event in 2007, in only her third event after returning to the tour after giving birth to her son.
Famous quotes containing the words bell and/or challenge:
“I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing—for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it’s impossible not to see that your opponent is you.... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
“The very best reason parents are so special . . . is because we are the holders of a priceless gift, a gift we received from countless generations we never knew, a gift that only we now possess and only we can give to our children. That unique gift, of course, is the gift of ourselves. Whatever we can do to give that gift, and to help others receive it, is worth the challenge of all our human endeavor.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)