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Thursday, March 21, 2019

Osuigwe, Gauff Advance at Miami Open; Checking on Results in Rainy Southern California

It's a travel day for me, as I head to California for the Easter Bowl and ITF Grade 1 International Spring Championships, so this will be an early and short post.

Whitney Osuigwe has won her first WTA main draw match today at the Miami Open, with the 16-year-old beating Mari Osaka 6-2, 6-4 in their rain-delayed first round match.

In the other intriguing wild card vs wild card match, Coco Gauff defeated Caty McNally 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.  McNally led 4-2 in the third and had three game points to go up 5-2, but Gauff broke, held, broke and held for the victory. Gauff has now won all three meetings with McNally, with the first two in junior events last year: the French Open final and the Roehampton Grade 1 final.

Rain has impacted both Southern California events this week: the $25,000 Men's World Tennis Tour event in Calabasas and the ITF Junior Circuit Grade 4 in Irvine. But there have been notable results.

In Irvine, 16-year-old wild card Hugo Hashimoto defeated No. 1 seed Zsombor Velcz of Hungary 6-4, 6-2 to advance to the quarterfinals. This is Hashimoto's third ITF junior event. All remaining boys are from the US, with only two of them seeded: No. 6 Stefan Dostanic and No. 7 Leighton Allen.

Girls top seed Vanessa Ong has advanced to the quarterfinals, where she'll face unseeded 13-year-old Qavia Lopez. Gianna Pielet, No. 9, is the only other seed to advance to the quarterfinals.

In Calabasas, 18-year-old wild card Drew Baird, who has played very little on the ITF World Tennis Tour, defeated No. 7 seed Martin Redlicki(UCLA) 7-6(4), 4-6, 7-6(5) in the first round for his first main draw WTT victory. Baird, who has committed to UCLA, will face Tobias Simon of Germany, who beat wild card Emilio Nava in the first round.

Eighteen-year-old Jenson Brooksby, who won last week's $25K tournament in Bakersfield, kept rolling with a 6-1, 7-5 win over Antoine Bellier of Switzerland, who won the $15K in Arcadia last week. Both players received entry this week via special exemptions. Brooksby will play former Virginia standout Alexander Ritschard in the second round. The two had a barnburner last week in the second round, with Brooksby taking it 6-7(2), 7-5, 7-6(5).  Former Stanford star Tom Fawcett beat No. 3 seed Ryan Shane(Virginia) 6-3, 7-6(3) and UCLA sophomore Keegan Smith, a qualifier, beat No. 8 seed Sekou Bangoura(Florida) 7-6(4), 4-6, 7-5 in 2 hours and 39 minutes.  Eighteen-year-old wild card Jacob Bullard, a Texas recruit, also posted a good first round win, taking out former Duke No. 1 Nicolas Alvarez of Peru 6-0, 6-3.  Stefan Kozlov[2] and qualifier Isaiah Strode are the other two Americans in the second round.

1 comments:

TEAM said...

It isn't the JJ Wolf University. It's THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY. L=LOSS. W=WIN.
Texas A&M 4 Ohio State 3 L=LOSS
Texas 4 Ohio State 1 L=LOSS
Maybe the USTA knows OSU isn't that good:) With or Without Wolf.
Let's see how they do in the NCAA's.