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Monday, September 26, 2016

Junior Fed Cup, Junior Davis Cup Play Begins Tuesday, Mmoh Qualifies for Tiburon $100K; Redlicki Wins Southern Intercollegiates; Fall ITF US Junior Swing Starts in Austin

The Junior Fed Cup and Junior Davis Cup, the ITF team competitions for those age 16-and-under, begin Tuesday in Budapest, with the US girls seeded No. 2 and the US boys seeded No. 4.

The first three days of competition consist of round robin group play. Those countries finishing on top of the four-country groups advance to the semifinals.  The US girls--Amanda Anisimova, Claire Liu, Caty McNally--are in the group with No. 6 seeds the Czech Republic, Peru and New Zealand, with New Zealand their first opponent.  The US boys--Sebastian Korda, Keenan Mayo, Sangeet Sridhar--are in the group with No. 5 seeds the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Brazil, with their first opponent Tuesday Switzerland.

There have been a few nomination changes from those announced last week, three in the girls draw, one in the boys draw.  Fourteen-year-old Denisa Hindova, who played for the Czech Republic in August's ITF World Junior Tennis 14-and-under competition, has replaced Lucie Kankova. Adrienn Horvath has replaced Timea Visontal for host Hungary, and Hiba El Khalifi has replaced Oumaima Aziz for Morocco. In Junior Davis Cup, Gilbert Soares Klier Junior replaces Joao Lucas Reis for Brazil.

The top seed in the Junior Fed Cup is Russia, followed by the USA, Japan and Poland.  The top seed in Junior Davis Cup is defending champion Canada, followed by Russia, China and the USA.

Live scoring is available here, and live streaming for courts 1-4 is scheduled to be available here.

Michael Mmoh, who was on the US teams that won the World Junior Tennis championship in 2012 and the Junior Davis Cup in 2014, qualified for the $100,000 Tiburon Challenger today by defeating 2016 Wimbledon boys champion Denis Shapovalov of Canada 6-4, 6-4. Mmoh will face Tennys Sandgren in the first round.  Fellow 18-year-olds Frances Tiafoe and Stefan Kozlov are also in the draw, with the sixth-seeded Kozlov winning his first round match today over Guilherme Clezar of Brazil, and No. 4 seed Tiafoe getting by 2014 NCAA finalist Alex Sarkissian 6-4, 3-6, 7-5 in his first round match.



I had planned on going to the final of the Division III men's Central regional at Kalamazoo today, but because two University of Chicago players won their semifinals, the match was played in Chicago today instead. No. 8 seed David Liu defeated Peter Leung 6-3, 6-2.  The doubles final was also an all-Chicago contest, with unseeded Tyler Raclin and Max Hawkins defeating No. 9 seeds Erik Kerrigan and Ninan Kumar 6-2, 6-2.  Complete results from the regional can be found here.

The women's singles final in the regional in New England was a replay of last May's NCAA singles final, with Julie Raventos of Williams coming out on top this time, beating Eudice Chong of Wesleyan 3-6, 6-3, 6-4. Chong did get a regional title however, winning the doubles title with Victoria Yu over Raventos and Linda Shin, the two-time NCAA champions.

Other regional results can be found at the ITA tournament page.


Michael Redlicki of Arkansas won the Southern Intercollegiate Championships in Athens Georgia today, with the top seed beating No. 11 seed Spencer Papa of Oklahoma 6-4, 6-4 in the final.  Unseeded Walker Duncan and Jan Zielinski of Georgia won the doubles title, beating No. 5 seeds Maxx Lipman and Elliott Orkin of Florida 4-6, 7-5, 10-5.

After only the US Open Junior Championships on the calendar for September, the ITF Junior Circuit returns in the United States with this week's Grade 5 in Austin, Texas.  That, along with a Grade 4 next week in Wichita Falls, leads up to the ITF Grade B1 in Tulsa, which I will be covering again this year.  Several top US juniors are in Canada this week for the Grade 2 in Montreal.  Juan Carlos Aguilar of Bolivia is top boys seed, with Trent Bryde seeded No. 2.  In the girls draw, Natasha Subhash and Carson Branstine are the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds.

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