February Aces; Domijan at Davis Cup; UCLA Gets Two Wins over USC; ISC Deadline Friday
My weekly column for the Tennis Recruiting Network is the usual one for the first Thursday of the month, with the top performers in February featured.
Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe is writing a blog for usta.com, and in his first entry Wednesday, he passed along his observations on first-time practice partner Alex Domijan. In today's second entry, Domijan also rates another mention. And the USTA also posted a Q and A today with Domijan. I'm not saying that anyone there is tired of Roddick, Blake and the Bryan twins, but after so many ties featuring that group, a fresh face is probably going to get his share of attention. 
USC and UCLA played both men's and women's dual matches today, or rather finished them today, as they were originally scheduled for Wednesday, and suspended by rain. The UCLA women, at home and ranked 11th, had won the doubles point before the rain came (in a tiebreaker at No. 1); the visiting UCLA men were leading in their doubles matches but had not yet recorded the point before play was halted. Both matches went to UCLA, with the women winning 4-3 and the men 5-2 (correction: the score, first reported as 5-2 UCLA was actually 4-3, with Matt Kecki beating Nick Meister 10-7 in a match tiebreaker), with the women having the much more riveting contest.
The UCLA women took a 2-0 lead when Yasmin Schnack defeated Sarah Fansler at No. 1, but 11th-ranked USC had won the first set in the other five singles matches, and they went on to win three of them, with Amanda Fink, Gabriela Niculescu and Maria Sanchez giving the visitors a 3-2 lead. Bruin freshman Carling Seguso battled back to beat Leyla Entekhabi 5-7, 6-2, 7-5 at No. 6, leaving the decision on the racquets of UCLA's Ashley Joelson and USC's Alison Ramos. Ramos had a 4-2 lead in the final set, but Joelson won the last four games to give UCLA its fifth straight win over USC, 4-6, 7-6(5), 6-4. For the complete results, see the UCLA website.
The men's match wasn't nearly as dramatic. After No. 13 UCLA won the doubles point with victories at No. 3 and No. 1, Steve Johnson of eighth-ranked USC quickly disposed of Michael Look at No. 3 to even it. But that didn't last long, as Holden Seguso (the brother and sister combo were 3-0 against the Trojans) stormed past Abdullah Magdas at No. 4, Haythem Abid beat top-ranked Robert Farah of USC at No. 1, and UCLA's Amit Inbar clinched it with a three set win over Jason McNaughton at No. 6. For detailed scores, see the USC website.
For more on last week's Stanford-USC match, especially Trojan freshman Daniel Nguyen's role in it, see this article from the Ventura County Star.
And a reminder that the entries for next month's ITF Grade 1 International Spring Championships in Carson, Calif. close on Friday. For more information, see the usta.com page, or the TennisLink site.
2 comments:
The Donald Young situation is turning from frustrating to disappointing to downright sad at this point. He lost 2 & 6 to a guy ranked #462 in the world. Didn't even make the quarters of the futures. Yikes.
USC's downfall , they lost both the important doubles point to UCLA and Stanford. MIght fall out of top 10 in next weeks ranking.
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