ITF Pan American Closed Recap, Videos; Wimbledon Introduces Final Set Tiebreaker; Volynets, Mateas, Crawford, Arconada Reach $25K Semifinals

Last week's ITF Grade B1 Pan American Closed in Charlotte North Carolina encountered one problem after another, including rain on four of the tournament's six days, but the singles did get played, and I recount the first Grade 1 titles for Elli Mandlik and Govind Nanda in this article for the Tennis Recruiting Network.

Videos of the two champions are below. It's the first time I've ever taken videos of a final when there was no chair umpire to call the score, so I apologize if it's not clear who won the points. One of the advantages of the courts at the University of Tulsa, where this tournament took place for many years, is the ability to sit behind the courts and get the overall sense of a point. That is not possible here, or at most other tournaments I attend.

For the videos of finalists Savannah Broadus and Eliot Spizzirri, click on their names to go to the TennisKalamazoo YouTube channel.

Wimbledon announced today that it will be eliminating the advantage set in 2019, with a tiebreaker at 12-12 ending all final sets. This includes both the singles and doubles in the Junior Championships, as well as men's and women's singles and doubles and the mixed doubles. Although junior matches beyond 12-12 in the third set are rare, they do happen occasionally, with one such match in last year's boys semifinal, which ended with Jack Draper of Great Britain beating Nicolas Mejia of Colombia 7-6(5), 6-7(6), 19-17.  The Australian Open and French Open have been using third set tiebreakers for juniors for some time, but the men and women still play out the final set until someone has a two-game advantage. It isn't known if those tournaments will change to a tiebreaker in 2019 now that Wimbledon has.

At the ITF Grade A in Osaka Japan, Robin Montgomery lost 6-0, 6-0 to top seed Clara Tauson, leaving no Americans remaining in either singles or doubles draws.  Tauson will face No. 9 seed Sohyun Park of Korea, while No. 2 seed Qinwen Zheng of China will play No. 7 seed Daria Snigur of Ukraine.  Three of the top four seeds have reached the boys semifinals, with No. 1 Valentin Royer of France playing unseeded Keisuke Saitoh of Japan and No. 2 seed Bu Yunchaokete of China taking on No. 4 seed Gauthier Onclin of Belgium.

Four Americans have advanced to the semifinals of the two USTA Pro Circuit events this week, with three of them teenagers.

Sixteen-year-old qualifier Katie Volynets, who has just been playing Pro Circuit tournaments and has no WTA ranking, defeated No. 6 seed Sherazad Reix of France 4-6, 7-5, 6-1 in exactly three hours to advance to the semifinals of the $25,000 Women's Pro Circuit tournament in Florence South Carolina. Volynets will face unseeded Mari Osaka of Japan on Saturday.   Duke freshman Maria Mateas, the No. 8 seed, defeated No. 2 seed Francoise Abanda 6-3, 4-6, 6-2 and will face another Canadian, No. 3 seed Bianca Andreescu, in the semifinals.

At the $25,000 Futures in Harlingen Texas, an American finalist is guaranteed, with Florida sophomore Oliver Crawford, 19, taking on recent Texas A&M grad Jordi Arconada in Saturday's semifinals.  Arconada beat former teammate and Aggie sophomore Juan Carlos Aguilar of Bolivia 6-2, 6-4, while wild card Crawford outlasted qualifier Maxime Cressy of France, a UCLA senior, 6-4, 1-6, 6-3.  It's Arconada's fifth Futures semifinal since finishing up at Texas A&M in May; Crawford will be playing in the first Futures semifinal of his career. The other semifinal will feature top seed Denis Yevseyev of Kazakhstan against qualifier and recent Memphis standout Andrew Watson of Great Britain.