Seven of Eight US Open Women's Wild Cards Announced; Anderson Tops Pelletier at USO National Playoffs: More McEnroe Player Development Discussion
The USTA today announced seven of the eight women's wild cards for the US Open. The five Americans receiving wild cards are: Jill Craybas, Lauren Davis, Jamie Hampton, Alison Riske and Sloane Stephens. Casey Dellacqua of Australia and Aravane Rezai of France received the reciprocal wild cards.
The eighth wild card will be given to the winner of the tournament being held in College Park, Md. this weekend. The tournament began this afternoon, but rain pushed the first round matches to Friday.
Qualifying wild cards were given to: Ashleigh Barty of Australia, the girls Wimbledon champion, Julia Boserup, Daria Gavrilova of Russia, the 2010 US Open girls champion, Nicole Gibbs, Krista Hardebeck, Madison Keys, Jessica Pegula and Taylor Townsend. Gibbs, Keys and Pegula are all competing in College Park this weekend. For more on the tournament, see this USA Today article.
The ninth qualifying wild cards for both men and women will be decided this weekend in New Haven, and that tournament did get underway today as scheduled. The top four seeds in the men's draw, Blake Strode, David Martin, Chris Wettengel and Damon Gooch, all advanced, as did 2010 finalist Cecil Mamiit and Nathan Healey, who beat Eric Quigley 6-3, 6-4.
The big surprise came in the women's draw, with Robin Anderson knocking out No. 1 seed and WTA No. 336 Marie-Eve Pelletier of Canada 6-3, 7-5. No. 2 Yasmin Schnack, No. 3 Macall Harkins and No. 4 Amanda McDowell, all former college stars, reached the second round.
Anderson was also given a wild card into the WTA event's qualifying tournament, so she will play two matches on Friday. Other wild cards into qualifying include Asia Muhammad, Connie Hsu and Allie Will. Sloane Stephens is in qualifying based on her ranking.
For a complete recap of today's results, see the New Haven website.
A conference call organized by ESPN yesterday featured the McEnroe brothers, both of whom will be part of the network's coverage of the US Open. I wasn't on the call, but there were several questions about player development which can be found in this transcript at Tennis Panorama.
2 comments:
I think the USTA should have worked something out with the ATP/WTA and staged both the main draw wildcard tournaments and the qualifying wildcard tournaments in Cincinnati this week. Let those players get to play in front of some fans. Hopefully they think about this in the future.
Wow, such arrogance. Most champions were developed with parents or other close family members running the show. The Macs have never discovered even one great player.
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