Navarro Faces Defending Champion Perez-Somarriba, Riffice Meets Rodrigues in Friday's NCAA D-I Singles Finals; Doubles Finals Set; Fratangelo and Lepchenko Advance to French Open Main Draw, which Features 27 Other Americans; Division III Individual Championships Begin Friday

Virginia's Emma Navarro and Florida's Sam Riffice came through with wins over tenacious top seeds today in the NCAA Division I singles semifinals today at the USTA's National Campus in Lake Nona Florida, and will face the No. 2 seeds for the championship Friday.

Navarro won't be facing just any No. 2 seed however, as the freshman will take on defending champion Estela Perez-Somarriba of Miami, the only college player to defeat her this season.

Navarro's 6-4, 2-6, 6-2 win over North Carolina's Sara Daavettila was tight all the way, until Navarro took the last three games of the match to earn the victory.

Navarro won all three of the deciding points in the first set, with Daavettila taking all four of the deciding points in the second set. After the players left the court for a 10-minute heat break, Navarro served first and promptly lost it on a deciding point. But with the back-and-forth of the first two sets, she wasn't discouraged, taking the second game of the set on a deciding point, and she was able to close out Daavettila, who spent five years at North Carolina building a reputation for comebacks.

"I was pretty confident in my game plan, it was just if I could execute it well enough," said Navarro, whose match with Daavettila earlier in the conference season went unfinished. "In the second set, I lost four deuce points, which was pretty tough, then I was able to win a big one in the third set that kind of helped me to run away with it a little. But yeah, I was pretty calm and confident."

Perez-Somarriba had mounted a stirring comeback in the quarterfinals against Abbey Forbes of UCLA, coming from 5-0 in the second set and saving a match point before claiming a 6-7(5), 7-5, 6-3 victory in a match that was over three hours in duration. In today's 7-6(4), 6-0 win over unseeded Janice Tjen of Oregon, Perez-Somarriba got stronger as the match went on, and the fifth-year senior, said she felt no effects from the previous day's exertions, despite the midday heat and humidity of central Florida.

"I've been living in Miami for almost five years and I think I've got used to the heat, the humidity, playing under the sun," Perez-Somarriba said. "My fitness is one of my strengths, so when I make matches physical, that's good for me....I'm ready for tomorrow, I'm ready to battle, ready to stay on the court, basically whatever it takes to get a W tomorrow, that's what going to happen and that's what I'm going to do."

While Perez-Somarriba saved a match point, Draxl had made a habit of coming from behind, and he saved match points in both the first round and the round of 16. Riffice was determined not to give Draxl any second chances, although he didn't really turn on the afterburners until the third set in his 7-6(5), 2-6, 6-1 victory.

"I wasn't trying to hit winners," said Riffice, who came forward and put away every third-set volley against Draxl, which is difficult to do. "I was just really committed to my game plan of taking the ball early and hitting, not through the court, but off the court. Not give him pace to work with, and trying to close at the net. I just feel like I struck first, and it's so hard to come back from that when it's 100 plus degrees out there. When we're this deep in the tournament, he's had a lot of physical matches, and I was focused on those first three, four games, and from there, I played probably my best of the whole tournament."

Riffice's opponent in the final is South Carolina's Daniel Rodrigues, who moved into the championship match when unseeded Adrian Boitan retired with injury trailing 7-6(1), 3-1.

Rodrigues, who has yet to drop a set this tournament, credits 2019 NCAA champion Paul Jubb, his former teammate, with guiding him through the process.

"We talked a lot before the tournament," said Rodrigues, a junior from Portugal. "I called him myself to ask how did he approach the beginning of the tournament and each round...we keep talking every day and he keeps telling me to keep going. The main thing [he said] was to focus on each match, not the final trophy or anything like that. He told me that each win would be a great win; everybody in the draw is very good, everybody can beat anybody, so I approached every match and was happy with every single win and that was very important."

Rodrigues was candid in revealing that he hoped to play Draxl, who had beaten him in April, with getting another chance at the top-seeded Canadian providing the motivation. Rodrigues defeated Riffice in three sets at the SEC Shootout last fall in their only recent meeting.

The SEC will claim both men's singles and doubles titles, after this evening's doubles semifinals saw two teams from the conference advance to the finals. Unseeded Finn Murgett and Tad Maclean of Auburn defeated unseeded Guy Den Ouden and Adrian Oetzbach of Pepperdine 6-4, 6-1 to advance to the final. They will face No. 3 seeds Adam Walton and Pat Harper of Tennessee, who defeated Sven Lah and Constantin Frantzen of Baylor, 5-8 seeds, 7-5, 6-3. Murgett and Maclean are aiming to be the first Auburn team to win a men's doubles title since Mark Kovacs and Andrew Colombo captured it in 2002.

Navarro fell just short of a spot in both the singles and doubles final Friday, when she and partner Rosie Johanson lost to Kylie Collins and Lulu Sun of Texas 4-6, 7-5, 10-8. The unseeded pairing of Collins and Sun are looking to win the first women's doubles title in program history when they meet No. 4 seeds Makenna Jones and Elizabeth Scotty of North Carolina. The Tar Heels defeated unseeded Alana Smith and Anna Rogers of North Carolina State 6-3, 6-4 in the top half semifinal.

Both the men's and women's singles finals are scheduled for noon, with the doubles finals to follow. Live streaming is available for all four finals through the TennisONE app.

The draw for the French Open was revealed today, although qualifying will not be completed until Friday. Bjorn Fratangelo, the 2011 French Open boys champion, qualified for the main draw today, beating Aleks Vukic(Illinois) of Australia 6-2, 7-6(3). Also qualifying was Varvara Lepchenko, who defeated Anna-Lena Friedsam of Germany 6-1, 6-3. Hailey Baptiste, Jenson Brooksby(Baylor) and Mackenzie McDonald(UCLA) play their final round qualifying matches on Friday.

The matchups of the 27 Americans who were selected for the main draw, not including Fratangelo and Lepchenko and the three other possible US qualifiers, are below. It's bad luck for American men that with only 10 players in the draw, four are scheduled to face off in two first round matches. Only one such all-American contest came up in the women's draw, despite the 17 US women who received direct entry.

MEN
Top half
Tennys Sandgren v Novak Djokovic[1](SRB)
Taylor Fritz[30] v Joao Sousa(POR)

Bottom Half
Sebastian Korda v Pedro Martinez(ESP)
Sam Querrey v John Isner[31]
Steve Johnson v Frances Tiafoe
Marcos Giron v Grigor Dimitrov[16](BUL)
Reilly Opelka[32] v Andrej Martin(SVK)
Tommy Paul v Christopher O’Connell[WC](AUS)

WOMEN
Top half
Bernard Pera v Ashleigh Barty[1](AUS)
Coco Gauff[24] v qualifier
Jennifer Brady[13] v Anastasia Sevastova(LAT)
Sloane Stephens v Carla Suarez Navarro(ESP)
Venus Williams v Ekaterina Alexandrova[32](RUS)
Ann Li v Margarita Gasparyan(RUS)
Sofia Kenin[4] v Jelena Ostapenko(LAT)
Jessica Pegula[28] v Lin Zhu(CHN)
Shelby Rogers v Rebecca Peterson(SWE)

Bottom half
Serena Williams[7] v Irina-Camelia Begu(ROU)
Danielle Collins v qualifier
Madison Keys[23] v Oceane Dodin[WC](FRA)
Christina McHale v Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova[31](RUS)
Madison Brengle v qualifier
Amanda Anisimova v Veronika Kudermetova[29](RUS)
Alison Riske[27] v Lauren Davis

After a day off between the team event and the individual championships, Division III competition resumes Friday with two rounds of singles, followed by the first round of doubles. Ethan Hillis of Washington-St. Louis is the top men's seed, with defending champion Ysabel Gonzalez-Rico of Emory the top women's seed.

Links to the women's brackets are here; the men's brackets are here.