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Wednesday, June 4, 2008

French Open Juniors: Two Qualifiers and a Wild Card Join Top Seeds in Quarterfinals


This is about the time in a Grand Slam when there are so few matches played that the juniors become interesting to those looking for a fresh story. Wednesday at Roland Garros brought some surprises, including the loss of France's Jonathan Eysseric, the third seed, to Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria, seeded 14th. That was a match I would have gravitated to had I been in Paris, knowing the talent and the recent success of both in Futures events on clay, but it turned out to be a 6-3, 6-4 win for Dimitrov and another disappointing exit from a junior slam for Eysseric. Dimitrov plays No. 12 seed Jerzy Janowicz of Poland, whom he beat in the semifinals of the Orange Bowl last December in three sets.

Another favorite, although not seeded, who lost in the round of 16 is Flilip Krajinovic of Serbia, who dropped a three-setter to Evgeny Donskoy of Russia. Top seed Bernard Tomic will face his toughest challenge Thursday in unseeded qualifier Guido Pella of Argentina, who, despite his lowly ITF junior ranking, has already claimed the Italian Junior championship. Caesar Ramirez, the second seed, plays unseeded Soong-Jae Cho of Korea, who surprised Ryan Harrison on Tuesday. Speaking of Harrison, Ted Robinson has written about him and about top seed Melanie Oudin in his blog post today.

Charlie Bricker of the Sun-Sentinel isn't far behind, although he has the round wrong in this paragraph, as Oudin has reached the quarterfinals, losing a total of six games in three matches. She has also reached the quarterfinals of the doubles with Mallory Burdette. Oudin faces No. 10 seed Elena Bogdan of Romania and then the winner of the match between qualifier Lenka Jurikova of Slovakia and wild card Nathalie Mohn of France. Jurikova is 18-3 on the ITF Women's Circuit this year, so her run may not be all that surprising. while Mohn has a WTA ranking of 544. Girls second seed Arantxa Rus of the Netherlands has also reached the quarterfinals, without loss of a set.

Eleanor Preston talks with Dimitrov, who is always a lively source of quotes, and also with Oudin, in this story on the ITF Junior website.

4 comments:

oldschool said...

I just read that Olivier Sajous has tranferred from Florida Atlantic to Texas. I also noticed that former longhorn assistant coach David Komie, who was at FAU, is no longer listed as the coach there. Anyone know the story ?

Anonymous said...

If I were Ryan Harrison I wouldn't be particularly thrilled to have Ted Robinson write about me. The guy has an.... 'interesting' handle on the English language, an at times tenuous grasp of facts (and logic) plus some less than reliable editing skills.

Regardless, Harrison's comment regarding the need for US players to, as Robinson put it, have "the chance to train on red clay", if they are to succeed at the French is interesting in the light of what was discussed, in this blog, a few days ago.

Anonymous said...

Andrew, If you notice in that Ted Robinson piece Ryan was not quoted in there. He was asked if the clay back home was much different from the red clay in Europe. His response was that it was a lot different. He was not the one to say that the U.S. players need to train on red clay that was Teds added opinion when Ryan said that it was a lot different. Would you have the same opinion of Ted Robinson if he had written about someone from Australia? By the way I don't know who he is.

Anonymous said...

Pat,

You'll notice that I wrote,
"as Robinson put it", which indicates that the quote was attributed to him, not Ryan.

My opinion (not of Robinson the man but Robinson the writer - there's a big difference) would remain the same irrespective of who he was writing about. Quite surprised you would need to ask.

Regardless, given that he seems to have drawn an inference that differs markedly from what Ryan actually said then I think you can see why I said, if I were Ryan, I wouldn't be too thrilled he was writing about me. Quite simply, if the writer is sloppy you never know what you'll end up being quoted as having said or what inference they'll draw from your otherwise innocent comments. Unfortunately there are far worse out there than Robinson and with much bigger audiences.

** Ted Robinson is an American sportscaster who has been a lead network announcer at the US Open and other majors for close to 20 years. Can't remember whether it's NBC or the USA Network (don't they exist under the same umbrella ?) but I believe he is on with Courier, McEnroe and Austin.