Qualifying Complete at Men's ITA All-American Championships; Stockton Challenger Leads Three USTA Pro Circuit Tournaments This Week; ACC Moves Tennis Championships to Rome, GA

Qualifying is complete at the Saint Francis Health System ITA Men’s All-American Championships in Tulsa, with main draw matches scheduled to begin on Thursday.  The iron men among the qualifiers are three players who won four matches in the pre-qualifying Saturday and Sunday, and three more in qualifying Monday and Tuesday to earn places in the 64-player main draw.  That's seven wins in four days, which I'm sure makes tomorrow's day off particularly welcome.

Those players are Columbia freshman Alex Keyser, Texas freshman Christian Sigsgaard and South Florida junior Peter Bertran.  Also qualifying are USC freshman Brandon Holt and Texas freshman Yuya Ito, both of whom appeared in the ITA's preseason Newcomer/Freshman rankings.  Texas, Columbia and Cal all had two players get through qualifying.

Only five of the 16 qualifiers were seeded in the qualifying draw, which is not an unusually low number, but I do wonder if the seeding would have held up better had it been based on UTR. There's no way to determine that, and just six of the top 16 UTR ratings made the main draw, but it does seem the use of UTR has stalled a bit as far as ITA majors are concerned.

Bobby Knight has all the day's results from Tulsa at College Tennis Today.

The women's qualifying for the Riviera/ITA Women's All-American Championships will finish on Wednesday after two rounds of qualifying are being played today; the women's day off was Monday, between pre-qualifying and qualifying.

Live streaming will be available from FloTennis for both men and women, but there is a charge, which I believe is $19.99 per month or $149.99 per year. I will be trying it out in the next few days and will let you know how that goes.

Three USTA Pro Circuit events are on the schedule this week: the $100,000 ATP Challenger in Stockton, California, the $25,000 women's tournament in Redding, California, and the $10,000 women's tournament in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

The first round is complete in Stockton, with Michael Mmoh, Frances Tiafoe(3), Mackenzie McDonald, Denis Kudla(5), Noah Rubin, Tim Smyczek(2), Brian Baker, Daniel Nguyen and Dennis Nevolo the Americans reaching the second round.  Top seed Bjorn Fratangelo lost his opening round match today to Joris De Loore of Belgium 3-6, 6-3, 7-5.

Qualifying was completed today in Redding and Hilton Head, with a few first round matches played as well.  Kylie McKenzie and Alexandra Sanford are the two juniors who made it through qualifying in Redding, while wild card Julia Elbaba had a good first round win over No. 7 seed Renata Zarazua of Mexico, by a 6-1, 6-3 score.

In Hilton Head, 15-year-old Sophia Hatton and 18-year-old Alexa Bortles earned places in the main draw.  Maria Mateas won her first round match over 15-year-old Elizabeth Scotty, while 15-year-old Emiliana Arango of Colombia, a quarterfinalist last week in Charleston, defeated Amy Zhu 6-3, 6-4 in first round action.

The ACC announced last month they were moving their conference championships out of North Carolina due to recently passed discriminatory laws, and today they revealed the new venues.  The men's and women's conference tennis championships will be held in Rome, Georgia, where a new 60-court facility has just opened.  For more about the venue, see this article last week from the Tennis Recruiting Network.