Rain Washes Out Play on Day Three of Junior Orange Bowl; Australian Open Junior Acceptances; Semifinals Set at USTA Collegiate Winter Wild Card Playoffs

©Colette Lewis 2019--
Coral Gables FL--

The saturated Har-Tru Courts at B12s site Salvadore Park

Today was one of the worst weather days I can recall in my 16 years of covering the Junior Orange Bowl, and with the exception of seven consolation matches in the B12s, no matches were started, let alone finished, with persistent rain continuing throughout the day.

Third round main draw matches are scheduled to be played Friday morning beginning at 10 a.m., with the round of 16 set for Friday afternoon, but that schedule relies on dry weather, and it continues to rain tonight, with the forecast not good for Friday either. The consolation draw is likely to be abandoned if there are any more delays; the weather forecast for the remainder of the tournament includes a 50% chance of rain everyday through Monday according to AccuWeather.

See the TennisLink site for Friday's times and for updates on the weather Friday morning.

With no tennis viewed today, it's a good time to look at the 2020 Australian Open Junior Championships acceptances, which came out Tuesday. As usual, there are not many Americans making the trip, and only six are currently in the main draw: Martin Damm, Dali Blanch, Aidan Mayo, Robin Montgomery, Savannah Broadus and Katrina Scott.

Those accepted into qualifying are Alex Bernard, Zane Khan, Stefan Leustian, Cash Hanzlik, Ellie Coleman, Madison Sieg, India Houghton, Elvina Kalieva, Skyler Grishuk and Charlotte Owensby.

Although there are more current Top 10 players in the boys field--Shintaro Mochizuki(JPN), Harold Mayot(FRA), Damm and Shunsuke Mitsui(JPN)--than the girls field, the girls field is much deeper, with their cutoff 67, while the boys cutoff is 107. In fact, the cutoff for the girls qualifying is 102 meaning it was harder for a girl to get into qualifying than a boy to get into the main draw. The girls Top 10 players are Elsa Jacquemot of France, Kamilla Bartone of Latvia and Montgomery.

It should be pointed out however that many players pull out of Australia once they get a handle on their schedule for the new year, and often the junior qualifying isn't full, or extends much farther down in the rankings than it would appear from the first acceptance list.

The rain has not extended as far north as Orlando, and the semifinals are set at the USTA's Winter Wild Card Playoff after three days of round robin play.  Advancing to the men's semifinals are Cannon Kingsley(Ohio State), Govind Nanda(UCLA), Sam Riffice(Florida) and William Blumberg(UNC). Kingsley plays Riffice and Nanda play Blumberg in Friday's semifinals. Advancing to the women's semifinals are Sara Daavettila(UNC), Alexa Graham(UNC), Natasha Subhash(Virginia) and Abigail Forbes(UCLA). The Tar Heel teammates play each other, with the two freshman meeting in the other semifinal.

Bobby Knight's twitter account is the source of this information. This is a link to the tweet below, which provides the scores of the round robin matches.

USTA Winter Wild Card Playoff Results - UNC's Sara Daavettila & William Blumberg both go 3-0 in group play. https://t.co/FXQP1J4uRw pic.twitter.com/fbwJ7JeJGA

— Bobby Knight (@College10s2day) December 19, 2019