Konjuh Wins Australian Open Girls Title; Bellis Into Les Petits As Semifinals; Tennis Plaza Cup Draws
Ana Konjuh of Croatia added the Australian Open girls singles title to the doubles championship she won on Friday, defeating Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 6-4.
It was Konjuh's 18th consecutive win in an ITF junior tournament, and certainly the biggest, with the Eddie Herr and Orange Bowl champion coming from 4-1 down in the second set to get her third straight win over Siniakova. Konjuh, the No. 3 seed, had beaten Siniakova in three sets in the Eddie Herr semifinals and in straight sets in the Orange Bowl final. According to the IBM match stats, Siniakova, the No. 2 seed, made only 35 percent of her first serves, while Konjuh had a 67 percent success rate in the one hour and two minute match.
By my points calculations, Konjuh will now go to Number 1 in the ITF junior rankings, replacing Taylor Townsend, who did not defend her singles and doubles titles in the Australian junior championships.
Konjuh teamed with Stanford recruit Carol Zhao of Canada to take the doubles title on Friday, with the top seeds defeating No. 6 seeds Oleksandra Korashvili of Ukraine and Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 5-7, 6-4, 10-7. The boys doubles championship went to Jay Andrijic and Bradley Mousley of Australia, who beat Maximilian Marterer of Germany and Lucas Miedler of Austria 6-3, 7-6(3).
I'll have the results of the boys final in my Saturday post. Or see the Australian Open website.
CiCi Bellis has reached the semifinals of Les Petits As after defeating No. 5 seed Anna Ureke of Russia 6-4, 6-3 on Friday. Bellis, the No. 3 seed, will play No. 2 seed Sofya Zhuk of Russia, the 2011 Eddie Herr 12s finalist, in Saturday's semifinals. Bellis and Jaeda Daniel, the top seeds, will play in the doubles final Saturday against No. 8 seeds Magdalena Pantuckova and Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic. For the complete results, see the Tennis Europe website.
The draws for the USTA Regional Level 3 Plaza Cup are up at the TennisLink site. I will be primarily covering the boys and girls 14s and the boys 18s, which are at Salvadore Park. I also will be going to the University of Miami on Saturday to see the Kick-off Weekend final between the Miami and Arizona State women, which I will write about in detail for the Tennis Recruiting Network next week.
2 comments:
Colette, just curious as to why you go all the way down to FL to cover a level 3 tourney with a weak field? Do you cover any other level 3's?
I actually started this site back in 2005, and a Florida sectional 18s was the 1st event I covered. Bobby Curtis always invited us to come down to help and we've found Florida in January to be preferable to Michigan. We don't work that Designated anymore, so we substituted the Plaza Cup for that. I usually go to 1 or 2 Futures events too, or an event at Boca, but neither worked out this year. The fields are often quite good at the Plaza Cup. Two years ago, Townsend, Kiick and Crawford all played it. Wiersholm won the boys 18s last year.
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