Bad News from Barcelona

There was no victory for either the U.S. Junior Fed Cup or Junior Davis Cup teams today in Barcelona. The girls, seeded second, lost the doubles point, and the match, to seventh seed Belarus 2-1, relegating them to the competition for fifth place. All three matches went three sets. Brengle won, Gullickson lost and they lost as a doubles team, although I can't figure out what the score was from the ITF juniors site.

The boys lost again, this time to Italy 3-0, and are now in the bottom group, playing for, at best, 13th place. After being seeded second, this is probably not where they expected to end up. But then the seedings are always guesswork. Two unseeded teams, Chile and Brazil, have advanced to the semifinals, along with third seed The Netherlands and fourth seed Russia.

The ITF's roundup story is here.

Following the surprising run of Tamira Paszek to her first WTA title, we now have another junior, Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland, making more news. (She and her sister Urszula won the Junior Fed Cup for Poland last year). Thursday the 17-year-old qualifier defeated Venus Williams 6-3, 6-0 in a Tier II event in Luxembourg. Even with Williams suffering a recurrence of her wrist injury, that's an impressive score for the 2006 French Open girls' champion. The details on the match from the WTA website are here.