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Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Rain Mars First Day of Junior Davis Cup and Junior Fed Cup Competition; Beltrame Wins Napa Shootout; Lenz, Donaldson Advance in Napa Challenger, Other Pro Circuit News

Rain has delayed the completion of today's first of the round robin matches at the Junior Davis Cup and Junior Fed Cup competition in San Luis Potosi Mexico.  According to this update on the ITF Junior site, the first matches began three hours late, and the rain made other appearances in the afternoon, although according to the ITF tournament page, Tornado Alicia Black did complete her first round singles match against Shu Yue Ma of China, winning it 6-0, 6-2.  (The live scoring, which is supposed to be here, isn't working for me.) The US boys were playing Taiwan, and William Blumberg won his match over Chien-Hsun Lo 7-5, 6-2. The tournament page shows Michael Mmoh winning 3-0, ret. over Tung-Lin Wu.

Live streaming is showing the Junior Davis Cup tie between Mexico and Korea still going, so perhaps the results on the tournament page will be updated in the next few hours.

At the Porsche Napa Valley Tennis Classic, the Solinco Wild Card Shootout was won by Sebastian Beltrame of Harvard, who beat teammate Nicky Hu 10-4 to win a main draw wild card into a Pro Circuit event. Beltrame, a sophomore, went undefeated in the three-day event.  For complete results from the tournament, see this pdf from the Cal website.


Baylor's Julian Lenz continued his excellent run at the $50,000 Napa Challenger, winning his first round match after posting three qualifying wins the previous three days. The ITA preseason No. 1, a junior from Germany, defeated former ITA No. 1, Australia's JP Smith of Tennessee, 6-3, 2-6, 6-4 to advance to a second round match against former USC standout Daniel Nguyen. Nguyen, who also qualified, upset No. 8 seed Frank Dancevic of Canada 6-3, 6-7(6), 6-3. For more on Lenz's win, see this from the Baylor website.

Jared Donaldson defeated Ryan Harrison 6-3, 7-5 to advance to the second round, joining top seed Sam Querrey, Rhyne Williams(Tennessee), Dennis Novikov(UCLA) and 18-year-old Elias Ymer of Sweden. NCAA champion Marcos Giron lost to No. 3 seed Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus 6-3, 6-2.

Another Baylor athlete doing well on the professional level this week is senior Emma Burgic of Bosnia, who has qualified for the $50,000 women's Pro Circuit tournament in Las Vegas. Burgic defeated WTA No. 292 Tatjana Maria of Germany 6-2, 7-6(4) in today's third round of qualifying.

Jennifer Brady of UCLA, who received a wild card into the main draw, continued her hot streak, beating Amandine Hess of France 7-6(1), 4-6, 6-3 in the first round.

The $10,000 Amelia Island women's tournament also had rain disruptions today, but Caroline Dolehide and Andie Daniell were among the first round winners there.

At the $10,000 Irvine Futures, 2014 NCAA finalist Alex Sarkissian(Pepperdine), Stefan Kozlov, Deiton Baughman, Taylor Fritz, Gage Brymer(UCLA) and Lucas Gomez of Mexico won first round matches.  Sarkissian, seeded No. 7, was the only seed to play today, with the other seven scheduled for Wednesday.

1 comments:

Dave said...

Slow day at work and had a chance to watch Harrison and Donaldson. Did not think either player played their best. Jared was able to dictate with better court positioning and made far fewer errors off the ground, even if he was not racking up winners.

Harrison really struggled on return of serve, and his forehand was extremely shaky for parts of the match. He didn't have a lot on his serve or forehand, and seemed to be dealing with confidence issues. I think his grips make it difficult for him to flatten the ball out and attack, and the length of his swing makes it tough to defend against an aggressive player. His greatest strengths are his serve and variety IMO but was not able to capitalize on either today.

Not the best I have seen Jared play...he was a bit tight closing out the match and served under 30% in the second set, but he made enough returns and was definitely the better more solid baseliner. He will have to play a bit better to beat Odesnik. Must be a nice win for him to beat another American he probably looked up to as a young junior.