Top Seeds Advance at USTA Winter Nationals; Tornado Alicia Black Update; Lim Named to Philippines Davis Cup Team; Lewis Receives WTA Wild Card

Below is an update on the status of the top 8 seeds in all eight divisions at the USTA Winter Nationals in Arizona.  The 16s and 18s in Scottsdale are into the third round, with only four top 8 seeds out total in the four divisions and the top 2 still alive in each division.  No. 3 seed Janice Shin lost in the second round of 18s today, to Julia Deming, 2-6, 7-5, 7-6(4).  The 12s and 14s in Tucson are into the round of 16 now after playing two rounds on Monday and one round today.  Again, most of the seeds have advanced, with the top 2 in each of the four divisions still in the hunt for a gold ball.

B12s
1. Jackson Armistead
2. Cooper Williams
3. Lucas Brown
4. Phillip Dell out 3rd rd
5. Jelani Sarr out 3rd rd
6. Cole Stelse
7. Learner Tien
8. Will Mayew

B14s
1. Maxwell McKennon
2. Aryan Chaudhary
3. Matthew Robinson
4. Alex Lin
5. Peter Murphy
6. Sam Feldman out 2nd rd
7. Filipe Costa
8. Baylor Sai out 1st rd


B16s:
1. Brandon Nakashima
2. Cannon Kingsley
3. Andrew Dale out 1st rd
4. Robert Cash
5. Siem Woldeab
6. Ryder Jackson
7. Jacob Bullard
8. Nathan Han

B18s:
1. Alexander Brown
2. Richard Ciamarra
3. Mason Beiler
4. Maxwell Freeman
5. Christian Alshon out 1st rd
6. Ryan Seggerman
7. Robert Maciag
8. Matthew Lord

G12s
1. Vivian Ovrootsky
2. Matilyn Wang
3. Tsehay Driscoll
4. Meera Jesudason
5. Gracie Epps out 1st rd
6. Liv Hovde
7. Phoebe Peus
8. Stephanie Yakoff

G14s
1. Gianna Pielet
2. Ava Catanzarite
3. Muskan Mahajan out 1st rd
4. Kylie Collins
5. Jenna DeFalco
6. Neha Velaga
7. Jennifer Kida
8. India Houghton out 3rd rd

G16s
1. Angelica Blake
2. Briana Crowley
3. Sedona Gallagher
4. Dasha Kourkina
5. Lauren Stein out 1st rd
6. Ashley Yeah
7. Niluka Madurawe
8. Jayci Goldsmith

G18s
1. Hannah Zhao
2. Samantha Martinelli
3. Janice Shin out 2nd rd
4. Elysia Bolton
5. Anika Yarlagadda
6. Abigail Forbes
7. Sara Choy
8. Chelsea Kung

Tornado Alicia Black at 2015 US Open Junior Championships

While I was waiting for the girls Junior Orange Bowl finals to start last week, I ran into Tornado Alicia Black, the former US Open girls finalist (2013) and two-time finalist at the USTA Nationals in San Diego(2014, 2015).  The 18-year-old Black, who has not played since retiring in her first round match at the US Open Junior Championships in 2015, has been recovering from hip surgery and although she is back on the court, does not expect to compete until April at the earliest.  During her lengthy absence from competition, she has been coaching a bit, and she told me she has found being on that side of the sport has helped her gain perspective. She also said she has a better understanding of the game now that she is teaching it, but is hoping to return to the professional circuit, where she reached as high as 404 in the WTA rankings.

In other news, 17-year-old Alberto Lim, who played the recent Eddie Herr and Orange Bowl, reaching the quarterfinals of the former, has been named as a member of the Philippines Davis Cup team.  Lim, who has been ranked as high as 12 in the ITF junior rankings, joins former collegians Treat Huey(Virginia), Ruben Gonzales(Illinois) and Frances Alcantara(Pepperdine) on the team. Their next tie is in February, against Indonesia in the Asia/Oceania Group II.

New Zealand's Jade Lewis, an LSU recruit, won the New Zealand national championships earlier this month, beating Georgia Tech's Paige Hourigan in the final 5-7, 6-3, 6-1. Lewis was to receive a qualifying wild card into the WTA's ASB Classic, which begins next week in Auckland, but it has since been reported that her wild card was upgraded to one in the main draw instead.

Also in New Zealand tennis news, most of which surfaces at this time of year in advance of the WTA and ATP events in the country in January, Simon Rea has been named director of high performance for Tennis NZ. The former Tennis Australia coach, who worked with Nick Kyrgios in his formative years, says in this New Zealand Herald article that the lack of funding for tennis in the country is not the primary impediment to its future success.