Results From All Seven ITA Week 3 Summer Circuit Events, Texas A&M to Host August Summer Nationals; My Conversation with Ken Thomas

It was a busy week 3 for the ITA Summer Circuit, with seven tournaments around the country producing both junior and collegiate champions in the top flights.

Two juniors won at the event at the USTA National Campus in Lake Nona, with Georgia's blue chip recruit Gianna Pielet, seeded No. 2, defeating No. 4 seed Madison Sieg 7-5, 3-6, 10-4 in the final. Sieg had beaten top seed Ellie Coleman 6-2, 6-2 in the semifinals. Sixteen-year-old blue chip Ozan Colak, seeded No. 2, won the boys title when unseeded Jelani Sarr withdrew prior to the final. Top seed Ben Shelton withdrew before playing his first match. Both the men's and the women's draws were limited to 16 players in the top flight and 32 players overall.

The top flights at the tournament in Danville California also were made up of 16 players. Blue chip Vivian Ovrootsky, who turns 16 tomorrow, defeated Wake Forest rising junior Carolyn Campana 6-1, 6-4 in the women's final. Ovrootsky, the No. 3 seed, defeated  top seed Connie Ma 6-1, 6-3 in the semifinals.  No. 3 seed Eric Hadigian, a rising sophomore at Gonzaga, won the men's title, beating Yale rising freshman Theodore Dean 7-5, 6-0 in the final.

At the Corpus Christi tournament featured just one flight in their 32-player draws. Division II West Alabama's Christopher Bulus, a rising senior seeded No. 2, defeated top seed Javier Gonzalez of UT-San Antonio 7-6(5), 3-6, 10-4 for the men's title. Top seed Jeanette Mireles, a five-star rising high school senior, defeated Western Michigan rising junior Femke Tjon-a-joe, the No. 2 seed, 6-0, 7-5 for the women's title.

Three-star recruit Lily Walther, a rising high school senior, won the women's title in Kansas City, when 14-year-old Brooklyn Olson, the top seed, retired in the final at 6-0, 0-5.  Top seed Maximiliano Sanoja, a rising senior at D-II Southwest Baptist, won the men's top flight title, beating unseeded rising sophomore Jaydn Richardson of Division II McKendree University 6-2, 6-2.

In San Diego, five star rising senior Maxi Duncan, the No. 3 seed, beat No. 2 seed Camille Kiss, a rising freshman at UC-Santa Barbara 1-6, 6-2, 10-5 in the women's final. Duncan had beaten top seed Katie Codd in the semifinals.  No. 3 seed Matthew Sah, a rising sophomore at UC-Irvine, won the men's title, beating Princeton recruit Ellis Short, the No. 7 seed, in a thriller 3-6, 6-4, 15-13.  Short had beaten top seed Thomas Paulsell 6-4, 6-3 in the semifinals.

The Wichita Falls Texas tournament saw both No. 2 seeds claim titles over No. 1 seeds in deciding tiebreakers. Katherine Petty, a rising freshman at Santa Clara, defeated Tennessee sophomore Callie Creath 7-6(7), 1-6, 10-8 for the women's title. Alex Martinez Roca, a rising junior at Midwestern State, beat 15-year-old Lucas Brown, currently No. 1 in the Class of 2023, 5-7, 6-4, 12-10 in the men's final.

At Indianapolis, which had a large numbers of participants leading to four flights for each gender, Oakland University rising senior Ava Theilman won the women's top flight title, beating Ellie Pittman, a five-star rising senior, 7-5, 2-6, 10-4 in the final.  Vanderbilt five-star recruit Michael Ross won the men's top flight title, beating five-star rising high school junior Preston Stearns (Peyton's brother) 6-4, 6-3 in the final.

In week 4 there are just four Summer Circuit events, but the following week there are ten on the schedule, with registration open for all of them.

The ITA also announced today that the National Summer Championships will be held at Texas A&M August 7-11. There had been suggestions that the last and most important event on the ITA Summer Circuit would be held at Lake Nona this year, but that obviously did not happen.

Ken Thomas checks the sound prior to our conversation

I had an opportunity to talk to longtime friend and colleague Ken Thomas of radiotennis.com in person today, as he has journeyed to Michigan from Southern California to continue his Pandemic Interview series. He set up his portable recording studio on my patio this afternoon and we talked, at a socially safe distance, about how I got into tennis, my connection to Kalamazoo, why I started Zootennis, and many other topics. If you missed the interview live, it is available via the site's archives, as are all the other interviews Ken has done in this series. He will be talking with men's head coach Ryan Sachire of Notre Dame tomorrow, and has many other college coaches on his schedule for the next two-plus weeks.

There is no sign in or password necessary to access these interviews; just go to the site, click on the Listen Live tab and press play.