Five U.S. Girls Qualify For Australian Junior Open Main Draw

Five U.S. Girls Qualify For Australian Junior Open Main Draw ~~~
©Colette Lewis 2006
Melbourne--

Not only do I have a desk now, I also have the results of last night's qualifying, and in addition to Kristy Frilling and Ashley Weinhold, three other U.S. girls have earned main draw spots. Gail Brodsky, Kimberley Couts and Melanie Oudin waited out the heat and took straight-set victories Saturday evening. The only U.S. girl failing to qualify was Kristy McVitty. The other three qualifiers are Eugenia Vertesheva and Ksenia Lykina of Russia and Benita Milenkiewicz of Australia.

An Australian player also survived in the boys qualifying -- John-Patrick Smith. Orange Bowl finalist Paris Gemouchidis, who was forced to qualify because the AO entries closed before the Key Biscayne results were added, had no difficulty advancing. Other boys qualifying are Antonio Sancic of Croatia, Thomas Fabbiano of Italy, Ricardas Berankis of Lithuania, Artem Smirnov of the Ukraine, Yuichi Sugita of Japan and Zhou-ging Zhou of China.

The juniors are fortunate to have today off, as the extreme heat policy was invoked today before the 11 a.m. start of play, with the temperature already at 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees) on its way to 109. Yes, 109. It's not humid, but that's hot by any accounting.

The ITF junior site has published its preview, and they too expected Sidorenko to be in the qualifying. The draw should be released after today's junior player meeting at 3 p.m. (midnight EST). I'll post a link to it as soon as it is on the AO website.