USTA Clay Courts Begin Sunday
As with all USTA Level 1 National Championships, there are four age group titles for both boys and girls on the line next week at the Clay Court championships. Five of those tournaments will take place in South Florida: the girls 12s at Boca Raton, the girls 14s at Plantation, the boys 14s at Ft. Lauderdale, and the tournament I'm attending, the boys 16s and 18s at Delray Beach.
The Sun-Sentinel posted this preview yesterday, unfortunately, they didn't get the word that Ryan Thacher had withdrawn (he's playing qualifying at the ATP Countrywide Classic in Los Angeles). With Thacher out, and Rhyne Williams, who holds the No. 2 USTA ranking in the 18s, never in, the No. 1 seed is Jordan Rux of Kerrville Texas. Dennis Nevolo, Reid Carleton and Wil Spencer round out the top four in the 18s. Notable unseeded players are Clint Bowles and Tyler Hochwalt; fortunately they didn't draw each other in the first round, and in fact both got byes and don't play until Monday. Andre Dome is another dangerous unseeded player; he landed in Rux's quarter, while 15-year-old Ryan Harrison could face No. 7 seed Steve Johnson in Monday's second round.
Alex Domijan and Evan King, the top two players in the USTA 16s rankings, are playing the 18s (Domijan is seeded, King is not), so the top seed in 16s goes to Tennys Sandgren, followed by Bo Seal, Lawrence Formentera and Matt Spindler.
I won't be arriving until Wednesday, so I'll undoubtedly miss some upsets, but I'll be following the results until then at the TennisLink website.
8 comments:
colette i'm obsessed with your website! hahah
keep it up please=]
Collete,
Is it possible to have only 29 seeds in a Super National?
3 seeds dropped out 3 days before matches started on Sunday. How come there were only 29 seeds? Why didn't they fill the other 3 spots-- Even though Hockwalt and Bowles weren't seeded-it could have been a huge disaster for the tournament-with only 29 of 32 seeds. Hockwalt and Bowles were very, very lucky.
I'm not sure why they didn't replace the seeds. The Friend of Court says only "If play has not begun, a draw may be remade:
if any one of the top four seeds withdraws, or
if two or more seeds withdraw"
I miss Rockville! They had a chair umpire for every match there. They mixed play with there with the 16s and 18s so you could see both age groups play and meet some college coaches. In Delray the 16s are isolated from the 18s and there are no chair umpires only roamers so you have to deal with the hooking that comes with tournament play. The college coaches are all at the 18s so you don't get to see them. It also so hot and humid like crazy so you can't breathe giving an unfair advantage to all the southern players. Matches are decided more on dealing with the heat exhaustion than playing tennis. I hope Jeff gets healthy and they bring this tournament back to Rockville!
So far they are doing a good job in Florida. It was plenty hot in Rockville but the air quality is far superior in Florida. It terms of not tolerating the heat, it's all about fitness. Those who work out at the gym and not just on the tennis court will definitely fair better.
did anyone see the Harrison/Johnson match? Saw the result, but was wondering how Harrison pulled this off?
While Steve Johnson is a very good player, I don't think he has ever been considered great. I would consider his friend and former doubles partner, Steve Foreman, who is also from SoCal, to be great and I think people often mix the two up.
Therefore, I wasn't that surprised by Harrison's win over him.
Ryan Harrison win over Steve Johnson was not a
fluke . He is a superior player. Johnson is a good player , but not that great .
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