Grant and Leach Celebrate Junior Davis Cup and Junior Billie Jean King Cup Selections with Third Round Victories at ITF J300 Pan American Closed
©Colette Lewis 2023--
Houston Texas--
©Colette Lewis 2023--
Houston Texas--
©Colette Lewis 2023--
Houston Texas--
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Labels: International Tournaments, ITF, ITF Grade A Tournaments, Slideshow, The Tennis Recruiting Network
The first round of singles at the ITF J300 Pan American Closed is in the books, and I'll be onsite Tuesday for my coverage, with the seeds taking the courts for the first time.
In today's first round, four of the six boys wild cards posted victories, as did three of the five girls wilds cards. Local wild card Mahir Khurana, 17, got a victory in his first ITF Junior Circuit tournament, beating fellow Texan Jacob Golden, a qualifier, 6-4, 4-6, 6-2. Mark Krupkin beat fellow wild card Cal Riggs 6-1, 6-2; Ian Mayew defeated Dominick Mosejczuk 6-4, 6-0 and Andre Alcantara downed Diego Herrera of Mexico 6-1, 6-4.
The girls wild cards picking up wins today are Alexis Nguyen, the 2022 16s Orange Bowl champion, who defeated Gianna Oboniye of Canada 6-7(3), 6-4, 6-1. Seventeen-year-old Tianna Rangan of nearby Sugarland Texas, who hasn't played an ITF all year, beat Mariya Dobreva of Canada 6-3, 2-6, 6-2, and Anita Tu, the USTA 16s finalist last month in San Diego, defeated Kenzie Nguyen 6-2, 6-4.
In addition to the second round of singles tomorrow, the first round of doubles is also on the schedule, but no seeds will play until Wednesday. Maxwell Exsted and Cooper Woestendick are the top seeds in the boys draw, with Maya Joint(AUS) and Ariana Pursoo the No. 1 seeds in the girls draw.
The ITF today announced its women's version of the Accelerator Program for Division I collegiate women, providing wild cards for the top women in several ITF Women's World Tennis Tour. The men's program, which was announced in January, has already been utilized this summer; this announcement, although retroactive to include the top five women of the 2022-23 season and the 2023 NCAA winner and finalist, starts now.
This program is much less robust that what the ATP has offered the men, which is geared at the Top 20 in the ITA rankings and is for up to eight Challenger main draw wild cards(Top 10) or eight Challenger qualifying wild cards(11-20).
For the women, the wild cards are for ITF 60K, 40K or 25K tournaments as follows:
Players returning to College in the autumn receive three main draw places to be used before the end of 2023, while those who have left College receive five main draw places to be used before the end of June 2024. Players can choose places at one W60 tournament, up to two W40 tournaments and up to two W25 tournaments.
Obviously, with the exception of the one $60K, these are lower level events than the men's Challengers, are five, not eight wild cards, are are limited to the five to seven women, rather than 10 to 20.
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Labels: ATP Challenger, College Tennis, International Tournaments, ITA, ITF, Pro Circuit, USTA, World Tennis Tour
The ITF J300 Pan American Closed begins Monday in Houston, with 32 matches, all between unseeded players, on the schedule. The seeds begin play on Tuesday against Monday's winners.
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Labels: ATP Challenger, International Tournaments, ITF, Pro Circuit, Pro Events, USTA, World Tennis Tour
Qualifying for the ITF Pan American Closed J300 began today in Houston, and I'll be covering the event in person for the 17th consecutive year(2020 was canceled) beginning Tuesday. The tournament, which is two to three weeks earlier than usual, was in Tulsa, right after the ITA Men's All-American Championships, through 2017. It has been unable to find a permanent home since then, with University of North Carolina-Charlotte hosting in 2018, and Lexington Kentucky's Top Seed Tennis Club staging the event in 2019, 2021 and 2022. This year's tournament was initially announced as being in Memphis, where a new facility for the University of Memphis teams is under construction, but several months ago the site was switched to the Giammalva Racquet Club in Spring Texas.
Due to the time of year, early in the school year, the qualifying draws rarely fill, but this year the boys came close, with first round byes for only the top 8 seeds in the 48-player qualifying draw. The girls qualifying is much more typical, with 19 byes.
Rain ended play this afternoon, with all five first round qualifying matches in the girls draw completed, along with all 16 boys first round qualifying matches also finished. That means two qualifying matches on Sunday for the winners, although most of the boys second round qualifying matches have completed the first set. As was the case last month in College Park, a 48-player main draw doesn't allow a rest day for qualifiers, so the plan is always to play the two matches on the first day of qualifying, not the second. But the weather did not cooperate this week; we'll see if anyone can duplicate the College Park run of Aspen Schuman, who made the final as a qualifier. She will be seeded this tournament, so won't play until Tuesday.
Two of the top US boys withdrew recently: Kaylan Bigun and Roy Horovitz. Notable girls withdrawing are Kaitlin Quevedo, Iva Jovic and defending champion Tatum Evans.
Two-time Kalamazoo 18s champion Zachary Svajda won his first Challenger title not quite a year ago, beating Ben Shelton in the final in Tiburon. The 20-year-old from San Diego will have an opportunity to take on another former collegian who is working his way up the ATP rankings for his second Challenger title, this one the Atlantic Tire Championships in Cary North Carolina. Top seed Rinky Hijikata, the former North Carolina All-American, defeated Patrick Kypson(Texas A&M) 6-4, 6-2 in today's semifinals, with No. 8 seed Svajda getting a second consecutive win over No. 2 seed Alex Michelsen 6-4, 7-5. Michelsen and Svajda had trouble holding serve throughout, with ten breaks in the 22 games played, but when it came time to close it out, Svajda held at love.
Svajda and Hijikata met two years ago at the Cary Challenger, when Hijikata had just left North Carolina to begin his pro career, with Svajda winning 7-5, 6-3. By reaching the final, Svajda is up to a career-high of 173 in the ATP rankings, while the 22-year-old Hijikata is up to 72, his career high.
Hijikata geared up for singles final by taking the doubles championship this evening. Hijikata and Australia's Andrew Harris(Oklahoma), the top seeds, defeated No. 2 seeds Will Blumberg and Venezuela's Luis David Martinez 6-4, 3-6, 10-6. It's second biggest title on Hijikata's doubles resume; he won the Australian Open men's doubles title with Jason Kubler in January. Harris will break into the ATP Top 100 in doubles with his third Challenger title, with three different partners, this year.
At the $15,000 men's USTA Pro Circuit tournament in Champaign Illinois, top seed Liam Draxl of Canada will face unseeded Will Grant for the singles title. Draxl, the former Kentucky All-American, defeated No. 4 seed Shunsuke Mitsui(Tennessee) of Japan 6-2, 6-2, while Grant, who didn't crack the starting lineup in singles for the Gators until last year, when he played No. 2, defeated No. 2 seed Zeke Clark(Illinois) 4-6, 6-2, 6-3.
Grant and Axel Nefve(Notre Dame/Florida), who played line 1 doubles for Florida last year, won the doubles title today, beating Clark and Kenta Miyoshi(Illinois) of Japan 6-2, 5-7, 10-5. It's Grant's second ITF Men's World Tennis Tour doubles title and the first for Nefve.
A disappointing debut as Davis Cup captain for Bob Bryan this week in Croatia, with the United States losing to Finland 3-0 to fail to advance out of the round robin group stage into November's quarterfinals. The two highest ranked players in the group, which also included the Netherlands and Croatia, were Frances Tiafoe and Tommy Paul, who went 0-4 in singles. Mackenzie McDonald(UCLA) won the only singles match for the USA, against Croatia, and today couldn't convert two match points in a 7-6(5), 1-6, 7-6(7) loss to ATP 125 Otto Virtanen.
Canada continued its Davis Cup defense in style, winning their group with a 3-0 record after beating Chile 3-0 today. Former NC State All-American Alexis Galarneau went 5-0 in Canada's three matches; for more on his heroics, see this article from the Davis Cup website.
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Labels: ATP Challenger, International Tournaments, ITF, Pro Circuit, Pro Events, World Tennis Tour
My recap of last week's hot and delay-filled US Open Junior Championships is up today at the Tennis Recruiting Network, so if you weren't able to follow my daily onsite coverage, often late into the night, this is an opportunity to get an overview of the titles for 17-year-old Joao Fonseca of Brazil and Stanford freshman Katherine Hui, who received a wild card into the event. I've read that she's the first wild card to win the US Open girls title, and it very well might be true, but I'm not sure where that information came from, as neither the ITF or the USTA (who has access all past draws) produced any notes for the US Open Junior Championships again this year. Look for my photo gallery from the US Open later this month at the Tennis Recruiting Network.
The ITF J200 in Montreal Canada concluded today with 16-year-old Monika Ekstrand claiming her first title on the Junior Circuit. Ekstrand, who is now working with former USTA National Coach Stanford Boster, qualified for the main draw, then won five matches, four against fellow Americans, to earn her first title. She defeated No. 5 seed Claire An, the reigning Easter Bowl 16s champion, 6-1, 6-0 in today's final. A semifinalist at last year's Orange Bowl 16s, Ekstrand will move into the ITF Top 200 for the first time with the title.
Top seed Abel Forger of the Netherlands won the boys title, beating No. 5 seed Nikita Filin 6-4, 6-1 in the final. No. 2 seeds Cooper Woestendick and Andrew Delgado won the boys doubles title, beating unseeded Kase Schinnerer and Mexico's Santiago Padilla Cote 4-6, 6-4, 10-8 in the final. No. 4 seeds Riley Crowder and Maya Dutta won the girls doubles championship, defeated No. 2 seeds An and Shannon Lam 6-3, 3-6, 10-2 in the final.
Three of the four semifinalists at the Atlantic Tire Championships ATP Challenger in Cary North Carolina have been decided, and three will be Americans, joining top seed Rinky Hijikata of Australia, the former All-American at North Carolina. Hijikata, who beat TCU junior Pedro Vives of Spain, a qualifier, 6-1, 7-5 in today's quarterfinals, broke into the ATP Top 100 for this first time this week, after reaching the fourth round of the US Open as the recipient of Australia's reciprocal wild card. Hijikata will play the winner of the night match between No. 6 seed Tennys Sandgren(Tennessee) and Patrick Kypson(Texas A&M).
It the bottom half, it will be Part Three of the 2023 USTA Pro Circuit battles between two-time Kalamazoo 18s champion Zachary Svajda, the No. 8 seed, and No. 2 seed Alex Michelsen. Michelsen, who turned 19 late last month, defeated 32-year-old Guido Andreozzi of Argentina, the No. 7 seed, 6-1, 7-6(3), while Svajda got by Toby Samuel(South Carolina) of Great Britain 7-5, 5-7, 6-1.
Michelsen won the first meeting this year with Zvajda at January's rain-plagued USTA Pro Circuit men's $25,000 tournament in Malibu, taking that semifinal contest 6-4, 1-6, 6-1. A few weeks later, Svajda beat Michelsen 7-5, 6-3 in the second round of the ATP Challenger 75 in Cleveland; their paths have not crossed since then.
2021 USTA National 18s champion Ashlyn Krueger has advanced to her first WTA semifinal at this week's 250 tournament in Osaka Japan. Krueger, 19, defeated Anna Kalinskaya of Russia 6-3, 6-1 in the quarterfinals and will face unseeded Mai Hontama of Japan for a spot in the final. Krueger is currently 100 in the WTA live rankings, a new career high for her.
There will be an American in the final of the WTA 500 in San Diego, with qualifier Emma Navarro(Virginia) facing Sofia Kenin in tonight's semifinal. The winner of that match will play No. 4 seed Barbora Krejickova of the Czech Republic in Saturday's final; she defeated Danielle Collins(Virginia) 3-6, 7-5, 6-2 this afternoon. Navarro earned her first WTA Top 10 win last night, beating No. 9 Maria Sakkari of Greece, the No. 3 seed, 6-4, 0-6, 7-6(4).
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8:28 PM
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Labels: ATP Challenger, International Tournaments, ITF, Pro Circuit, Pro Events, The Tennis Recruiting Network, Tournament Synopsis, World Tennis Tour
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