Notes from Tarbes, Plantation, Carson, Laguna Niguel and Melbourne; Sundling Has Surgery, Wins Award
The last round of Les Petits As qualifying saw three of the four U.S. players advance to the main draw, with only Nadia Echeverria Alam losing, by the score of 5-7, 6-4, 6-4, to Solene Guyomard of France. Brooke Austin, Luca Corenteli and Roy Lederman will play their first round matches on Tuesday, as will Vicky Duval, who is seeded fifth. Teen Tennis champion Sachia Vickery, who is seeded second behind Slovakia's Petra Uberalova at Les Petits As, won her first round match easily, as did Joe DiGiulio, the No. 5 seed, and unseeded Nikko Madregallejo. To follow the action via the tournament's excellent website, click here.
The last round of qualifying in the 128-draw of the Men's $10K Futures in Plantation, Florida, saw U.S. juniors Chase Buchanan, Tennys Sandgren and Bob van Overbeek earn spots in the main draw, with Sandgren and van Overbeek winning third set tiebreakers to do so. Raymond Sarmiento, Rhyne Williams and Evan King received main draw wild cards. At the $50,000 Challenger at the Home Depot Center in Carson, 2008 NCAA doubles champion Kaes Van't Hof of USC has earned one of four qualifying spots in that event. At the $25,000 women's tournament in Laguna Niguel, US Open Junior champion CoCo Vandeweghe and Stanford recruit Stacey Tan are among the eight qualifiers for the main draw. For draws and results of this week's Pro Circuit events, see usta.com.
In early second round action at the Australian Open Junior Championships, No. 5 seed Laura Robson, trailing 5-1 in the second set against Thailand's Kanyapat Narattana came all the way back to force a tiebreaker and cruised through that for a 6-3, 7-6(0) victory. Expect more stories like this one from the Guardian, given that Murray's defeat last night left a lot of British tennis writers in search of someone to cover.
Qualifier Alexandra Cercone of the U.S. couldn't hang on to her 3-0 lead in the third set against No. 14 seed Ksenia Kirillova of Russia, losing 6-3, 3-6, 6-4. Lauren Embree, now the last U.S. player with a chance for the third round, plays later this evening. For live scores and draws, visit the Australian Open website.
And finally, I ran across this Los Angeles Daily News story about Winter National Champion and USC recruit JT Sundling, who was notified that he was named this year's winner of the Southern California Tennis Association's Evelyn Houseman Junior Sportsmanship Award on the same day he had surgery on the wrist he injured at the Orange Bowl.
11 comments:
Embree rallies to win, 3-6, 7-5, 6-0. Didn't look good for her the first hour but she came back strong.
Sundling virtually won winters with a 1 handed backhand due to this wriist injury.
Sundling is one of the great talents in the USA and has so much grit/heart in him! Once he fills into his body and solves some footwork issues it is going to be scary the results that kid can produce. If winning a supernnational down your biggest weapon isnt proof of that then i dont know what is.
Is Ilyushin no longer going to Texas AM says mississippi state on tns recruiting now
"hesgotitall said...
Sundling virtually won winters with a 1 handed backhand due to this wriist injury."
Sundling is a great player and a great kid but this statement is just crap. Not only is it not true, but it insults the other top players who lost to him.
I saw Sundling's final match and I didn't see him hit a one-hander even one time. The only thing I've noticed about him is that he no longer hits a big flat first serve, he mostly spins it and this is the only potential sign of an injury. However, if his right wrist is the injurred one, then this would not explain the slower serve.
Kaes Van't Hof plays with PolyStar Energy string as does the USC Team, the same string Davydenko plays with. Good luck to him.
The Mississippi State story on his addition to the team is here.
Lauren Embree's win over Sophie Letcher was solid but not particularly convincing. Might look good for someone looking at their computer but not in person. As far as her game goes, there wasn't anything about it that really looked threatening. High percentage of first serves in (same as Capra) but not a lot of result for it (same as Capra). Ground game solid but not spectacular. Letcher was the better player for the first set and a half but, once her condition disappeared, she barely won a point. All credit to Embree as she was professional from start to finish. When her opponent swamped her she tried to hang tough and wait for a drop in intensity. When it came (in a huge way) she capatilised and won the match with little difficulty.
McHale's loss to Robson was no real surprise. At not point during the match did McHale look like she was going to win. The result, as often happens, looks a lot closer than it really was.
As I noticed with Capra and Embree, McHale's serve was nothing more than a point starter. Like them, she got a good percentage in but it just wasn't strong enough to be threatening. Robson, on the other hand, has a serve that will either win her cheap points or set up an easy winner. That said, she (Robson) did throw in quite a number of double faults (think it was 8) and was a bit shaky on her second serve. No doubts at all that, if she'd had a better rhythm on her serve, the match would have been over much quicker.
Have to say that, since last seeing Robson win junior Wimbledon (thanks to Colette) I was struck by how tall she's become. That being the case, I wouldn't be expecting too much from her this year as she adjusts to her new size and the different court geometry it brings. Of course she is a good chance of a win but I'm leaning more towards Anna Orlik as the eventual champion.
(just finished watching both Orlik and Robson play today so could mention their matches later).
Just saw that sarmiento lost 7-5 in the third to dimitrov. Not a bad showing but I'm sure he would have liked to come out with a win againist some one of the capabilities or Dimitrov.
I saw his match in the semis and he was hitting 85% backhand slices and usaully tends to rip the ball with his backhand. He is a grity player when he needs to be and hopefully he can reach his potential. So i would assume it was the same in the finals being as it must have been a serious injury for surgery to be required.
hesgotitall said...
"I saw his match in the semis and he was hitting 85% backhand slices and usaully tends to rip the ball with his backhand....So i would assume it was the same in the finals being as it must have been a serious injury for surgery to be required."
That's an interesting assumption but it is simply incorrect. I saw the final. Virtually no slice backhands. Virtually all two handers flat or with topspin.
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