McHale Ready for French Debut; Falcon, Cipulli Win Missouri Valley US Open Qualifying Playoff Spots; Women's French Qualifying Draws Released
Erin Bruehl of usta.com posted this question and answer session with Christina McHale yesterday, as her first main draw match in the French Open draws closer. McHale reveals that she has still not relinquished her amateur status, but it sounds as if she continues to have success this summer and keeps her ranking within the Top 200 it's a real possibility. As McHale mentions here, she withdrew from the French Open junior championships, but she is still entertaining the possibility of playing the US Open juniors in September. Last year she was unable to play in that tournament due to a thigh injury. 
In the US Open National Playoffs, we now have two more players joining the Eastern section's Nikita Kryvonos and Katerina Sevcikova at the National Tournament. Former LSU All-American Megan Falcon and current University of Missouri-Kansas City men's assistant Dante Cipulli won the Missouri Valley section's tournament yesterday. For more on their wins, see this article from the section's website.
There are four other sections holding tournaments this week or weekend: New England, Mid-Atlantic, Northern California and Southern California. When I looked at the draws for those events, my first reaction was surprise at how few players were entered. But then I remembered the discussion on this site earlier about the cost, and it looks as if that has been a factor. Of course, the timing is not good for current collegiate players, but I had expected that Southern California would still have no trouble filling a 64 draw. As it is, there are only 37 men's entrants in the tournament and 33 women's participants. The other sections are surprisingly drawing more men, but the women's entrants are rarely more than 30. Falcon, for example, only had to beat a field of 16.
There is still time to enter in the other sections, so if you're interested, go to the US Open playoff page at usta.com.
The draw for the women's qualifying at Roland Garros has been released. There are seven Americans competing for a main draw spot: Julia Cohen, Lilia Osterloh, Alison Riske, Alexa Glatch, Lindsay Lee-Waters, Madison Brengle and Bethanie Mattek-Sands, who plays 17-year-old Croatian Ajla Tomljanovic of the Evert Academy in the first round.
In the men's first round of qualifying today, six of the seven Americans advanced: Jesse Witten, who won 17-15 in the third set over No. 4 seed Marcos Daniel of Brazil, Michael Yani, Ryan Harrison, Ryler DeHeart, Kevin Kim and Alex Bogomolov. Only Lester Cook failed to advance to the second round.
See the Roland Garros website for results and draws.
1 comments:
http://www.thepilot.com/news/2010/apr/11/indentured-servants-college-athletes-are-an/
Here is a link to a really interesting article written by a dad whose son plays college baseball. It is true of all sports including tennis. Is it all worth it?
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