Luxilon Field Announced
Although I've been to the Key Biscayne tournament (which has been the Lipton, the Nasdaq and, beginning this year, the Sony Ericsson) as a spectator, next week will be my first visit as a reporter instead of a tennis fan.
My husband and I will be attending the Greater Miami Tennis Foundation dinner honoring Bobby Curtis Sunday night, and then will cover the Luxilon Cup, an invitational event featuring 12 boys and 12 girls, which begins on Tuesday March 27. Here's the list of participants I received late last week from IMG:
Boys:
Ricardas Berankis Latvia
Devin Britton USA
Gastao Elias Portugal
Tyler Hochwalt USA
Austin Krajicek USA
Mike McClune USA
Giacomo Miccini Italy
Kei Nishikori Japan
Guido Pella Argentina
Matt Reid Australia
Guillermo Rivera Chile
Fernando Romboli Brazil
Girls:
Julia Boserup USA
Nastassya Burnett Italy
Naomi Cavaday Great Britain
Sorana Cirstea Romania
Jamie Hampton USA
Tammy Hendler Belgium
Michelle Larcher de Brito Portugal
Petra Martic Croatia
Maria Mokh Russia
Anastasia Pivovarova Russia
Jasmina Tinjic Croatia
Allie Will USA
If I remember correctly, there are four seeds with first round byes, so eight matches on Tuesday and Wednesday, then four on Thursday and the two finals on Friday. I don't know what the seeding is based on, but I do know that Berankis and Cavaday each won Pro Circuit events last weekend.
Cavaday, 17, who spent several weeks last December training at Bollettieri's under Nick's personal guidance, qualified for the Orange, California $25,000 event and after beating Alex Glatch in three sets in the first round of qualies, had only one other difficult match on her way to the title. It was her second title on the ITF Women's Circuit.
Berankis, 16, who reached the semifinals of the Australian Junior Championships this year, won his first ITF Men's Circuit event in Portugal, and unseeded, he did it the hard way, winning four qualifying and five main draw matches.
8 comments:
C,
what is the criteria for the US picks?
how do the selection of that tournament goes? anyone?
Most, but not all, have some ties to IMG and Bollettieri's.
Simply invitation only, birth year '89 and younger. Both Tyler and Mike were participants last year.
Berankis is from Lithuania, not Latvia
You're right. The release said LTA, not LTU, and I jumped to the wrong conclusion about Berankis'country, even though I should have known better. (I saw him win the Eddie Herr 14s in 2004). The three-letter abbreviation for Latvia is actually LAT, so it was probably a typo in the release.
Ricardas is from Lithuania, he is a rising star in world tennis,,,,,,,, do not forget his name,,
The Banana Bowl was a disaster for the US. Copa Gerdau shaping up the same. Ty plays Jebavy first round? Four Americans play each other first round? They should have stayed home instead of playing against guys that have been on RED clay for months.
Melanie Oudin is the real thing. Watch for her.
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