Roehampton Over For US Juniors; Five of Six Americans Reach Final Round of Wimbledon Qualifying; Sock, King Receive Winnetka Wild Cards

The weather here in Michigan, although apparently warmer, has resembled that of Wimbledon, with showers off and on most of the week. So I've watched a lot of Centre Court tennis on ESPN2, while turning to ESPN3 when a young player I've followed in juniors is on one of the televised outdoor courts. Today Christina McHale made a disappointing exit, losing to Austria's Tamira Paszek 6-4, 6-1 and Bulgaria's Grigor Dimitrov also lost, to No. 12 seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France 6-7(4), 6-4, 6-4, 7-6(8), but the 20-year-old former Wimbledon boys champion played well, showing the English tennis fans why he has long been considered the next big thing. Ryan Harrison and Bernard Tomic of Australia had their matches suspended by darkness, with Harrison leading No. 7 seed David Ferrer of Spain 7-6(6), 1-6, 6-3, 2-4 and Tomic trailing Igor Andreev of Russia 6-4, 7-5, 3-6.

Results and Friday's schedule can be found at wimbledon.com.

With no roof to close at Roehampton, neither the boys Wimbledon first round qualifying or the Grade 1 boys semifinal matches finished. The Americans still remaining lost today, with No. 12 seed Vicky Duval falling to No. 4 Yulia Putintseva of Russia 6-1, 6-7(6), 6-3 in the quarterfinals and Krista Hardebeck losing to unseeded 15-year-old Indy De Vroome of the Netherlands 2-6, 6-0, 6-4 in the semifinals. Marcos Giron lost to Russian qualifier Aslan Karatsev 7-5, 6-7(5), 6-4 in the quarterfinals. Karatsev and Evgeny Karlovskiy, aslo a Russian qualifer, were in the third set of their semifinal when the match was postponed. The winner of that match will play No. 13 seed Liam Broady of Great Britain, who defeated No. 6 seed Mate Pavic of Croatia 6-3, 6-2 in the semifinals.

News was better in the Wimbledon qualifying, where five of the six Americans advanced to Friday's final round, and all were able to finish their matches. Andy Murray's mother tweeted from Roehampton (she was there as coach for junior Emma Devine) that there were no umpires, which is shocking news. Can anyone who was there today confirm that? I have only been to qualifying at a junior slam in New York, but they have chair umpires there, and very good ones too. I can't find any reference to junior slam qualifying in the ITF rules, and the ITF doesn't actually have the power to set rules at the junior slams (one of the things I learned when Sean Berman was listed as Australian in the 2010 AO, but remains USA to the ITF), so it probably makes sense that there is no reference to it. But even without a rule, it is absolutely critical to have chair umpires in grand slam qualifying.

Back to the results, which saw all three US girls--Lauren Herring, Catherine Harrison and Elizaveta Nemchinov--advance to the final round of qualifying Friday. Dennis Novikov and Connor Farren had routine straight-set wins, but Emmett Egger fell to Nik Razborsek of Slovenia 6-4 in the third.

For both Wimbledon qualifying and Roehampton results, see the LTA website.

It was announced today by the Nielsen Pro $50,000 event in Winnetka, Ill. that Robby Ginepri and Jack Sock were recipients of main draw wild cards, and that Evan King's wild card into the qualifying was upgraded to the main draw for next week's tournament. For a story on Stanford recruit Robert Stineman, who received a qualifying wild card, see this article from PioneerLocal.