Harrison and Seal Reach Semifinals in ITF Grade A in Osaka; Inside Junior Tennis Podcast
U.S. boys make up 100% of the semifinalists in the ITF Pan American Closed here in Tulsa, and over in Japan, American boys comprise 50% of the semifinalists in the Osaka Mayor's Cup, a Grade A championship. No U.S. girls made the trip, and Ryan Harrison and Bo Seal were the only U.S. boys to venture across the Pacific, but both are still playing. Seal, a wild card (those U.S. Open Juniors qualifying wild cards that have gone to Japanese players the past several years no doubt figured in that selection), has beaten the No. 12, No. 8 and No. 4 seeds; Harrison has disposed of No. 13, No. 1 and No. 11 seeds. Because they were drawn into opposite halves, they could meet in the final if both beat seeded opponents on Saturday. But with all the big points available at a Grade A, both Seal, 16, and Harrison, 15, are positioning themselves for the 2008 Junior Slams.
For the ITF's coverage of the Osaka Mayor's Cup, click here.
Also, the latest edition of Inside Junior Tennis is now available. Kevin McClure and I spoke before the Polo ITA All-American, so the news is about the previous week's events.
10 comments:
First time i've been to your blog, and i must say i like the focus on junior tennis. i have never followed it; always just the pros.
If you want to get a little pro flavor, TTC has another racquet bracket for the ATP Madrid Masters. Federer may actually not win a tournament since Rafa has home court.
That's some impressive stuff, even if the Osaka Mayor's Cup is by far the weakest of the GAs. It still has some good players.
It will be especially interesting to see how the Harrison-Verryth match turns out. Verryth has distinguished himself as one of the best '91s in the world. However, he has been beaten by Devin Britton and Frank Carelton, so Harrison figures to have a good chance.
Colette,
Dont get the point you are making about US boys making up 100% of the semis at Tulsa. For starters most the players were Americans and about 1/3 of the draw was really laughable for a B1. It was essentially a US tourney to start with. As for Harrison and Seal, good job in Japan!
to the 1st anonymous. tulsa is a much stronger tournament. maybe not ranking wise. but strength wise it is much stronger. even though you may think 1/3 of the draw is laughable. have u seen the draw in osaka? its like 3/4 japanese players. so if you must talk about laughable. say it towards osaka. harrison is making and seal are making great runs. but if the US wouldve sent a few more good players such as klahn, jenkins, buchanan, they wouldve been 3 of the 4 semifinalists. no doubt. so dont call tulsa a laughable tournament until you see the level of osaka
Laughable. The whole thing is a joke. The USTA puts all these kids into the low level tournaments by giving them wild cards. Then they chase points until they are high enough to get into main draws. Then we have to read about how fantastic it is when they win their first level 5 ITF. Please spar me. The whole system is a joke.
Update from Osaka:
Ryan Harrison won. James Seal lost in the semis.
It seems the ITF reporters have decided to rest this weekend rather than cover the event, so here are the scores from the semis on:
Semis:
Ryan Harrison def. Mark Verryth 6-3, 6-7(2), 6-1
Tsung-Hua Yang def. James Seal 6-2, 7-5
Final:
Harrison def. Yang 6-3, 6-4
All else held constant, this win would put him at #44 in the rankings. Seal will move up to around #210.
BTW, Sam, the draw has 24 Japanese players (or 37.5%). Not quite 75%. There's no way you can say that Tulsa was "much stronger."
I think that Osaka was a poor Grade A tournament, the rest of the GA cut-off at 100-150 while Osaka cut-of at 400, and the last seeded player was 140 while in the rest of the GA the last seed is 30. Just with that you can see the poor tournament level.
tulsa was so much stronger it is not even close. ryan harrison is a great tennis player, however, all of the 4 semifinalists in tulsa would beat ryan harrison handly, not even inculding some of the player who lost in earlier rounds. and when i said 3/4 were japanese, i meant a high majority of the players are people from that area, there were 2 americans there, and both made semis, if we had sent klahn, jenkins, spencer, buchanan, domijan, britton, the us wouldve had 7 americans in the quarters, tulsa did have many poor players, but the majority of good players were in tulsa. osaka is possibly the biggest joke of a tournament, especially for a GA,im not saying there were only poor players, there were many good players, but tulsa was much stronger
Harrison had some great wins at Osaka and only dropped one set the whole tournament. Quite impressive for a young 15 year old.
very impressive. harrison is representing the US very well. with that victory, harrison moves to the 2nd highest ranked 92 in the world, only trailing Bernard Tomic, the owner of 92's since, forever, lets hope harrison can catch and pass him
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