Division III Individual Recap; Four US Juniors Reach French Open Third Round, Five Others in Second Round: Collins, McDonald Top Final ITA Oracle Singles Rankings

With excellent weather and exciting tennis, all in my hometown, my first NCAA Division III experience couldn't have been much better. Kalamazoo College's Branden Metzler gets most of the credit for making the individual portion of the six-day event particularly memorable.  My recap of the singles and doubles championships last week is available today at the Tennis Recruiting Network.

Nearly a full day of play helped move the French Open Junior Championships along, but more good weather will be necessary to actually get the junior portion of the tournament back on schedule, with eight second round matches still needing to be completed. Thursday's schedule features a second match for those eight second round winners, as well as the second round of doubles, and one player, Sonya Kenin, could play a fourth match as well, because she needs to complete her first round doubles match.

No. 10 seed Kenin, No. 2 seed Amanda Anisimova, Maria Mateas, and Michaela Gordon won their first round matches today, meaning the US girls went 10-0 in first round play, as six others had won on Sunday or Monday.  The second round didn't go as well for four of those six, with Claire Liu, Morgan Coppoc, Alexandra Sanford and Caty McNally losing today.  McNally's loss was particularly painful as the 14-year-old came back from two match points down against qualifier Ioana Minca of Romania to go from 2-6, 1-5 to 7-5, 3-0, only to fall 6-4 in the third. Minca is one of three qualifiers into the third round, joining Federica Bilardo of Italy and Iga Swiatek of Poland there.

Gordon's 6-2, 6-3 first round victory was over No. 16 seed Amina Anshba of Russia, who had won the Grade 1 in Belgium last week. Two US girls have reached the round of 16, with No. 9 seed Usue Arconada getting a 6-1, 6-4 win over Mira Antonitsch of Austria and No. 3 seed Kayla Day holding off qualifier Varvara Gracheva of Russia 7-5, 7-6(3), by winning the last seven points of the second set tiebreaker.

Mateas will meet top seed Olesya Pervushina of Russia, who hasn't played since Sunday, while Mateas played her first match today.

No. 15 seed John McNally won his opening round match today, beating Pavel Kotov of Russia 6-2, 6-4, but the other seeded US boy, No. 3 Ulises Blanch, went down to Alberto Lim of the Philippines 6-3, 6-1, a particularly surprising result on clay.

US boys into the third round with wins today are Nathan Ponwith, who beat Australian Blake Ellis 6-2, 7-5 and qualifier Gianni Ross, who took out No. 10 seed and former ITF No. 1 junior Casper Ruud 7-6(9), 6-3.

All but one first round doubles match was completed today, with boys top seeds Blanch and Mate Valkusz of Hungary and girls top seeds Pervushina and Anastasia Potapova of Russia safely into the second round.

Draws are available at the Roland Garros website.  Sandy Harwitt features Arconada in today's ITF Junior article on the tournament.

The ITA released the final Division I individual rankings of the year today, with NCAA champions Mackenzie McDonald and Danielle Collins finishing No. 1.  All players who are ranked in the Top 20 in singles earned All-America status.  With the NCAA Division III tournament going on, I don't believe I posted last week's final team rankings, so those are below too. Click on the bold headings for the complete ranking list.

Men's singles:
1. Mackenzie McDonald, UCLA
2. Mikael Torpegaard, Ohio State
3. Cameron Norrie, TCU
4. Dominik Koepfer, Tulane
5. Roberto Cid, South Florida
6. Aleks Vukic, Illinois
7. Thai Kwiatkowski, Virginia
8. Christopher Eubanks, Georgia Tech
9. Joao Monteiro, Virginia Tech
10. Tom Fawcett, Stanford

Men's doubles:
1. Mackenzie McDonald and Martin Redlicki, UCLA
2. Luca Corinteli and Ryan Shane, Virginia
3. Gordon Watson and Diego Hidalgo, Florida
4. Brett Clark and Robert Kelly, North Carolina
4. Arthur Rinderknech and Jackson Withrow, Texas A&M

Men's Team:
1. University of Virginia
2. UCLA
3. TCU
4. Ohio State
5. North Carolina
6. Oklahoma
7. Georgia
8. Wake Forest
9. Cal
10. Florida

Women's singles:
1. Danielle Collins, Virginia
2. Hayley Carter, North Carolina
3. Luisa Stefani, Pepperdine
4. Francesca Di Lorenzo, Ohio State
5. Ellen Perez, Georgia
6. Sinead Lohan, Miami
7. Breaunna Addison, Texas
8. Brooke Austin, Florida
9. Maegan Manasse, Cal
10. Stephanie Wagner, Miami

Women's doubles:
1. Aldila Sutjiadi and Mami Adachi, Kentucky
2. Brooke Austin and Kourtney Keegan, Florida
3. Whitney Kay and Hayley Carter, North Carolina
4. Maegan Manasse and Denise Starr, Cal
5. Catherine Harrison and Kyle McPhillips, UCLA

Women's Team:
1. Stanford
2. Cal
3. Florida
4. North Carolina
5. Vanderbilt
6. Ohio State
7. Georgia
8. Oklahoma State
9. Pepperdine
10. Miami