Kudla Beats Karlovic in Newport; USTA Women's Pro Transition Camp; Evan King's Davis Cup Blog; Midwest Closed Results

Denis Kudla received the final wild card into the ATP Campbell's Hall of Fame Championships late last week and he made the most of it today, defeating former world No. 14 Ivo Karlovic of Croatia 7-6(4), 4-6, 6-4 on the grass at Newport, Rhode Island. According to this article from the ATP website, the 18-year-old not only survived 24 aces from the Karlovic racquet, but also an alarm clock failure, to earn his second ATP tour level win. His first was last year at Newport. Ryan Harrison, who reached the quarterfinals in Newport last year, lost to Arnaud Clement of France in the opening round. John Isner is the top seed in this year's tournament. For an analysis of the strength of the field, which is frequently one of the weakest on the ATP World Tour, see the blog Heavy Topspin.

The USTA's Pro Tour Transition camp for women is underway this week in Boca Raton. The following players are participating:

Hilary Barte (Stanford)
Brooke Bolender (Michigan)
Lauren Embree (Florida)
Nicole Gibbs (Stanford)
Rachel Kahan (Duke)
Denise Muresan (Michigan)
Allie Will (Florida)

Grace Min

USTA National Coach Mark Freddie Rodriguez is conducting the camp, assisted by Jamea Jackson and Audra Cohen, the USTA Collegiate Team coaches.

Barte, Embree, Gibbs and Will are members of the recently named USTA Collegiate team, but the USTA is not limiting the camps or its assistance to just those six women (Maria Sanchez and Kristie Ahn are the other two Collegiate Team members).

An overview of the selection process for both the men's and women's Collegiate Teams can be found at the College Tennis section of usta.com.

One of the men's team members, Evan King, is serving as a United States Davis Cup hitting partner for this weekend's quarterfinal tie with Spain. King is writing a blog for usta.com, and the first entry is chock-full of details on what exactly the three hitting partners are required to do. Steve Johnson and Bradley Klahn, the other two collegiate team members in Austin, get their share of grief from Andy Roddick, and I suspect it's only the beginning for all three.


The Midwest Closed finished last week and the results of the finals are:

18s:
Ronnie Schneider(2) def. Christopher Diaz(3) 6-4, 6-4
Kasey Gardiner(3) def. Madeline Lipp(4) walkover (ill)

16s:
Konrad Zieba def. Thomas Fawcett(4) 6-3, 6-1
Alexandria Chatt(15) def. Alexandra Solovyev(4) 6-1, 6-1

14s:
Vincent Lin(1) def. Eddie Grabill(3) 6-0, 6-0
Francesca Dilorenzo(1) def. Dominique Vasile(7) 6-1, 6-0

12s:
Gianni Ross(2) def. John McNally(1) 6-4, 6-2
Abigail Desiatnikov(3) def. Isabella Lorenzini(2) 6-4, 6-1