Nats Draws; Southern vs. Texas for Boys Team Championship; US Teams Win Openers at ITF 14-U Competition; Scandalis Qualifies at Mercury Insurance Open

The draws for the Boys 18s and 16s are available at ustaboys.com. If you would like to make predictions or mention some of the first or second round matches you are most interested in, please post your comments at the seed announcement post from yesterday.

The boys 18s National Team Championship will be decided Tuesday on the University of Illinois campus, with No. 1 seed Southern facing No. 2 seed Texas. Southern edged unseeded New England 4-3 today, while Texas took out No. 3 seed Midwest 5-2. Will Glenn, the University of Georgia associate head coach, is the coach for the Southern team, while Steve Denton, the Texas A&M head coach, is leading the Texas group. Dane Webb is playing No. 1 for Texas, Austin Smith is playing No. 1 for Southern. Complete rosters of all teams can be found here, and the draw is here, in the simplified form not available on the TennisLink site.

The ITF World Junior Finals got underway in the Czech Republic today, with both the US boys and US girls winning their opening matches 3-0 over Italy and New Zealand respectively. The boys team, consisting of Stefan Kozlov, Eduardo Nava and Henrik Wiersholm, is the No. 1 overall seed, the girls--Julia O'Loughlin, Cristina Rovira and Katerina Stewart--are the No. 2 seeds, behind Russia. The ITF junior website is providing extensive coverage, including live scoring. There are articles on the boys competition, and a separate one on the girls action today.

Zoe Scandalis, who will attend USC this fall, won two matches in the WTA Premier event Mercury Insurance Open in Carlsbad, California over the weekend, and will make her WTA main draw debut against Christina McHale in the late match tonight. Scandalis defeated Kai-Chen Chang and Klaudia Jans-Ignacik to qualify. For more on Scandalis's win, see this article from the tournament website.

I'll have more about Amanda McDowell and Tennys Sandgren, who won $10,000 Pro Circuit titles yesterday, in tomorrow's Aces column for the Tennis Recruiting Network.

This week, the Pro Circuit is in Vancouver for the joint men's and women's tournaments, both $100,000 events, and in Decatur Illinois, for a men's Futures $10,000. Draws can be found at the Pro Circuit page at usta.com.