Pan American Closed Wild Cards; Keegan Beats No. 2 Seed Stefani at Women's All-American Championship, Top Seeds in Doubles Out in Tulsa and California; Mmoh, Rubin Advance to Stockton Challenger Quarterfinals

The wild cards for next week's ITF Grade B1 Pan American Closed have been distributed, with four boys and four girls receiving direct entry into the main draw.

Boys main draw wild cards:
Lukas Greif
Matthew Tsolakyan
Tyler Zink
Christian Alshon

Boys qualifying wild cards:
none

Girls main draw wild cards:
Alana Smith
Katie Volynets
Victoria Hu
McCartney Kessler

Girls qualifying wild cards:
Ryan Peus

With withdrawals from Sam Riffice, Gianni Ross, Oliver Crawford and Patrick Kypson, all of whom have been participating in a USTA physical training block since the US Open, only two ITF Top 100 boys remain in the draw: Liam Caruana of Italy and Trent Bryde. Although several girls have also withdrawn, that field remains strong, with 11 Top 100 girls, including ITF No. 1 junior Kayla Day, who will be defending her title.

My on-site coverage of the event will begin on Monday, October 10th.

The first round of singles is complete at the Riviera/ITA Women's All-American Championships in Pacific Palisades, California with several upsets.  Florida's Kourtney Keegan, who was scheduled to play qualifying but was moved into the main draw at the last minute, beat No. 2 seed Luisa Stefani of Pepperdine 6-3, 6-3, and Vanderbilt's Astra Sharma defeated No. 4 seed Sinead Lohan of Miami 6-1, 7-6(6).  With No. 5 seed Jasmine Lee of Mississippi State also dealt a loss, 1-6, 6-4, 6-4 by Oklahoma State's Vladica Babic, No. 7 seed Katarina Adamovic of Oklahoma State is the only seed remaining in the bottom half of the draw.

In the top half of the women's draw, only No. 8 seed Kennedy Shaffer of Georgia is missing from the second round. She lost to Kentucky's Aldila Sutjiadi 6-3, 5-7, 6-4. Top seed Hayley Carter of North Carolina, No. 3 seed Francesca Di Lorenzo of Ohio State and No. 6 seed Belinda Woolcock of Florida all advanced in straight sets.

Pre-qualifier Ena Shibahara of UCLA continued her form, beating Martina Frantova of North Carolina State 6-1, 6-2, giving the freshman seven wins in the past six days.  Sara Daavettila of North Carolina made it two freshmen in the second round with a 6-4, 6-0 win over fellow qualifier Nuria Ormeno Ruiz of Colorado.

Oklahoma State has three of the last 16 players remaining, with Florida and North Carolina each having two representatives.

Two rounds of doubles were played in California today, although unlike the men, who play the ITF/ATP format, the women play eight-game pro sets in the early rounds. Five of the eight seeds lost their first matches, including top seeds Stujiadi and Mami Adachi of Kentucky, who were beaten by Mayar Sherif Ahmed and Christine Maddox of Pepperdine 8-7(1).

The first round of singles at the Saint Francis Health System ITA Men's All-American Championships went more to form than the women's singles and doubles. Although five of the 16 seeds went out in the first round, only one was a top 8 seed: North Carolina's Ronnie Schneider, who lost to Elliot Orkin of Florida 6-3, 7-6(8).  Four 9-16 seeds were beaten: Northwestern's Konrad Zieba, Duke's Nicolas Alvarez, Georgia's Wayne Montgomery and Cal's Andre Goransson.  Zieba fell to pre-qualifier Christian Sigsgaard of Texas 6-1, 6-4; Alvarez was beaten by Logan Smith of USC 7-6(7), 6-2; Montgomery was defeated by Or Ram harel of Tulsa 2-6, 7-6(7), 7-5 and Goransson lost to Jose Salazar of Arkansas 3-6, 7-6(3), 6-1. Sigsgaard and qualifier Yuya Ito, also of Texas, are the only freshman remaining in the final 32. Sigsgaard and Peter Bertran of South Florida are the only pre-qualifiers still standing, posting eight wins since last Saturday.

Top seed Mikael Torpegaard of Ohio State and No. 2 seed and defending champion Thai Kwiatkowski of Virginia won their matches in straight sets.

The top-seeded doubles team of Julian Cash and Arjun Kadhe of Oklahoma State were upset by the Princeton team of Alex Day and Luke Gamble 1-6, 6-3, 13-11.

I watched some of both tournaments this afternoon on FloTennis.  I had some difficulty at first, because I was experiencing constant buffering when I was in the Chrome browser, but when I changed to Safari I was able to watch with only occasional buffering.

I was hoping for more in the way of point-by-point scoring in a graphical form, and in the women's setup, two of the courts didn't even identify the players, so I think improvements need to be made in that regard.  That being said, there's never been anything at all in the way of live streaming or live scoring at the women's All-American, so having something is better than nothing. I hope refinements are being planned for the future; when there's a charge, as there is for FloTennis, the standard to aspire to is the ATP Challenger live streams, which are free.

When not watching the college tennis, I was watching the Challenger live streams from the $100,000 tournament in Stockton, California. Michael Mmoh continued his excellent form, beating qualifier Salvatore Caruso of Italy 6-3, 6-2, and Noah Rubin reached the quarterfinals with a 7-5, 3-6, 6-1 win over Joris De Loore of Belgium.  Rubin will play unseeded Frank Dancevic of Canada Friday, with Mmoh taking on unseeded Darian King of Barbados in a rematch of last week's final in Tiburon, won by King.   Frances Tiafoe(3) faces No. 6 seed Alessandro Giannessi of Italy, and in the only all-American quarterfinal, No. 5 seed Denis Kudla meets Mackenzie McDonald.

At the $25,000 women's Pro Circuit event in Redding, California, four Americans have reached the quarterfinals.  2015 ITA All-American champion Danielle Collins won her tenth straight match on the USTA Pro Circuit with a 7-5, 6-1 decision over qualifier Giuliana Olmos of Mexico and will face top seed Sachia Vickery on Friday.

In the bottom half, Collins' former Virginia teammate Julia Elbaba moved into the quarterfinals with 6-4, 6-0 victory over qualifier Ronit Yurovsky and will face No. 2 seed Francoise Abanda of Canada next. Bernarda Pera meets Laura Schaeder of Germany after beating Anna Zaja of Germany 7-5, 6-0 in today's second round action.