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Thursday, September 2, 2010

Qualifying for U.S. Open Juniors Begins Friday With 32 matches; No U.S. Players Remain in Canada's Grade 1; Doubles Success for NCAA Champs

The qualifying draws are up for the U.S. Open Juniors at the ITF Junior site, and Hurricane Earl permitting, the first matches will begin tomorrow on the outer practice courts at 10 a.m. (For order of play, click here)

Chanelle Van Nguyen of the U.S., ranked No. 70, is the top seed in the girls qualifying, and she is one of 14 American girls in the draw. As is typical, a large number of alternates got into the draw, including Leighann Sahagun, who has an ITF ranking of 770. The other 12 U.S. girls in qualifying are Julia Elbaba, Blair Shankle, Lauren Herring (14), Annie Mulholland, Gabrielle DeSimone, Noel Scott, Robin Anderson (12) and the five wild cards: Taylor Townsend, Brooke Austin, Christina Makarova, Liz Jeukeng and Gabrielle Andrews. It appears that Monica Turewicz either withdrew, or was elevated to the main draw.

As I explain in my U.S. Open junior preview, which will be published at the Tennis Recruiting Network tomorrow, Diego Schwartzman of Argentina is the top seed in qualifying, although he does not have an ITF junior ranking. He plays Maxx Lipman tomorrow, who, along with Thai Kwiatkowski, was given a to-be-determined wild card. Other U.S. boys in the qualifying are Michael Zhu, Alexander Petrone (the last direct entry at 163), Gonzales Austin(15), Shaun Bernstein, Shane Vinsant(7) Daniel McCall, and the three other, previously announced wild cards: Spencer Papa, Alexios Halebian and Mackenzie McDonald. I'm not sure what happened to Junior Ore, because players above him on the acceptance list are in qualifying but he is not.

In the ITF Grade 1 Canadian Open in Repentigny, the last U.S. players were eliminated today, when Krueger and Vinsant lost in the doubles semifinals. In singles, Vinsant was the only American to advance as far as the third round, which he did by defeating No. 5 seed Dominic Thiem of Austria, in a third set tiebreaker. For draws, see the ITF junior website.

Lots of doubles were on the schedule today in New York, and both NCAA singles champions got a victory. Georgia's Chelsey Gullickson, playing with her older sister Carly, advanced to the second round of women's doubles with a 6-2, 6-3 win over Italy's Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci. Bradley Klahn of Stanford, a wild card entry with Tim Smyczek, got a first round men's doubles victory, beating the French team of Marc Gicquel and Gael Monfils 6-1, 6-2. Klahn and Smyczek play the top-seeded Bryan twins on Friday.

Ryan Harrison and Robert Kendrick won their doubles match over Andreas Seppi and Simone Vagnozzi of Italy 6-2, 6-3 and Harrison and Melanie Oudin also won in mixed doubles. Oudin teamed with Jamie Hampton to beat Jill Craybas and Sloane Stephens in women's doubles 7-5, 6-0. Sam Querrey and Nicole Gibbs lost in mixed doubles.

USTA National 18s champions Lauren Herring and Grace Min lost their first round doubles match to Russia's Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Slovakia's Dominika Cibulkova 6-1, 6-4.

For all the results and Friday's schedule, see usopen.org.


1 comments:

work-hard-tennis said...

That Ryan Harrison match was such a heartbreaker. Ryan did such a great job. I was very impressed with his interviews on ESPN. He really held his composure well.

Great job Harrison family!