Thirteen US Men Poised to Begin French Open Qualifying; Five Positive Covid-19 Tests Shake Up Draw; Teens Rune, Mutavdzic and Zheng Claim ITF World Tennis Tour Titles

In the year of the crazy tennis calendar (among other things), the Italian Open is not yet complete, but qualifying for Roland Garros will begin Monday, the day of the finals in Rome. 

Thirteen American men are in the 128-player qualifying draw, with 11 on Monday's schedule. 

Ulises Blanch, one of the last players to get into qualifying, will face French wild card Rayane Roumane and former UCLA star Maxime Cressy, who grew up in France and represented that country until just a couple of years ago, will also play a French wild card, Kyrian Jacquet. The third American to draw a French wild card is Christopher Eubanks, the former Georgia Tech star, who will play 2016 French Open boys champion Geoffrey Blancaneaux.

Three Americans are seeded in the qualifying: No. 6 seed Denis Kudla, who plays Enose Couacaud of France; No. 10 JJ Wolf, who plays Roberto Marcora of Italy, and No. 22 Bradley Klahn, who is not on Monday's schedule, but faces Roman Safiullin of Russia in the first round.

The only American v American battle is between Mitchell Krueger and Sebastian Korda.

Jack Sock's opponent is former Ohio State star Mikhail Torpegaard of Denmark, Noah Rubin plays No. 19 seed Ivo Karlovic of Croatia, Michael Mmoh faces Alex Bolt of Australia, and Brandon Nakashima takes on Juan Pablo Ficovich of Argentina. 

2017 NCAA champion Thai Kwiatkowski, who, like Klahn, is not on Monday's schedule, will play Facundo Mena of Argentina in the first round. 

The men's qualifying draw can be found here.

Unfortunately the big news of the day was not the qualifying draw, but the fact that five players had to be withdrawn from the tournament due to positive tests for Covid-19. The statement from Roland Garros did not name the players, two of whom tested positive themselves, while three were eliminated from the qualifying due to positive tests of their coaches. But according to Stephanie Myles, one of the five was American Ernesto Escobedo. See her reporting here for more on the developing situation. 

It was a great day for teenagers on the ITF World Tennis Tour, with three of them claiming titles. Seventeen-year-old Holger Rune of Denmark won his first title at the $25,000 tournament in Klosters Switzerland, with the unseeded 2019 French Open Boys champion defeating No. 5 seed Jesper De Jong of the Netherlands 6-4, 6-2 in the final. Rune, who won all four of his previous matches in three sets, was  playing in his first ITF World Tennis Tour final. 

At the $15,000 ITF women's tournament in Spain, 16-year-old Matilda Mutavdzik of Great Britain, playing in just her third ITF World Tennis event, earned her first title. The unseeded Mutavdzik, who has a much less impressive junior resume than Rune, defeated No. 3 seed Yvonne Cavalle-Reimers of Spain 6-2, 7-5 in today's final. Mutavdzik had beaten world No. 1 junior Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva of Andorra 6-4, 7-5 in the semifinals. 

Seventeen-year-old Qinwen Zheng of China has been rolling on European clay since the restart, and today she won her third title, all in the past month, at the $25,000 tournament in the Czech Republic. Zheng, who had to win three qualifying matches just to get into the main draw, overcame No. 4 seed Gabriela Talaba of Romania 4-6, 6-3, 6-0 in today's final. Zheng, a semifinalist and the French and US Open junior championships last year, has now won 19 of her last 20 matches. 

I am frankly surprised at the success of these younger players during this restart; I had expected that they would struggle as higher ranked and more experienced players filled all these draws. But the ITF's expanded junior exemption program, a part of the much-maligned World Tennis Tour restructuring, has proven to be extremely valuable in giving them a chance to compete at the higher levels. And to their credit, they have taken full advantage of those opportunities.