Boika Ousts Top Seed Vallejo in JA Banana Bowl; Qualifying Complete at Naples $15K; Isner, Kozlov and Brooksby Produce Historically Late Night in Acapulco
Leanid Boika, who was 4-5 in J1 and higher ITF junior events last year and lost in the first round in his junior slam debut in Australia, got the biggest win of his career at the Grade A Banana Bowl in Brazil, defeating top seed and Orange Bowl champion Adolfo Daniel Vallejo of Paraguay 2-6, 6-3, 6-4. Boika, who turned 17 in December, reached the semifinals of the J1 in Paraguay earlier this month. He will face qualifier Hayato Matsuoka of Japan in the second round.
Americans Cooper Williams[7], last week's J1 champion Nishesh Basavareddy and Jonah Braswell also reached the round of 16 with wins today.(Correction: Braswell lost; the online result last night had the wrong winner). US girls through to the second round are Qavia Lopez[5], Sonya Macavei, Ava Krug and Ahmani Guichard. Krug's 6-3, 6-4 win over Brazilian wild card Bruna Melato is her first at a Grade A tournament
Girls top seed Kayla Cross of Canada defeated Kaitlin Quevedo 6-1, 6-1 in her first round match.
The only professional tennis (dispensing ATP/WTA points) in the United States this week is another $15,000 tournament for men in Naples Florida, with the ATP Tour moving on to Acapulco Mexico, while the WTA is in Guadalajara. (There are also events in Chile and the Middle East). Both of those events have drawn quite a few Americans, as have the $25,000 tournaments in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.
The ATP 500 in Acapulco, with a Central time zone, starts its matches at 6 in the evening and it was 4:55 a.m. when the three on the schedule for Monday finished. All were over three hours in length and Americans won two of them, with John Isner beating Fernando Verdasco of Spain 7-5, 6-7(4), 7-6(3) and a cramping Stefan Kozlov, who got in as a lucky loser, beating Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria 7-6(8), 5-7, 6-3. That match ended after 1 a.m., with Jenson Brooksby and No. 2 seed Alexander Zverev still set to play their first round match, which the German won 3-6, 7-6(10), 6-2, saving two match points in the tiebreaker. The finish is the latest ever for an ATP-level match, surpassing a 4:34 finish at the 2008 Australian Open. Taylor Fritz[7] has advanced to the second round, with qualifier JJ Wolf, Marcos Giron, Tommy Paul and lucky loser Denis Kudla on tonight's schedule.
In Guadalajara, 14-year-old qualifier Brenda Fruhvirtova of the Czech Republic lost to Sloane Stephens 6-2, 6-2 in Monday's first round action. Qualifier Hailey Baptiste is through to the second round, but No. 2 seed Madison Keys, Lauren Davis, Caty McNally and Katie Volynets all lost their first round matches.
Two Americans made it through qualifying at the Naples $15K, Nathan Ponwith(Arizona State) and Jakub Wojcik(South Florida). Main draw wild cards this week went to Jordan Chiu, Fletcher Scott(Illinois), Sebastian Gorzny and No. 5 seed Ryan Harrison.
Three entries were via the junior reserved program: Ozan Colak, Nicholas Godsick and China's Jerry Shang. Even though Shang is ranked in the mid-600s, he still can't get into a $15K main draws on his own ranking. Godsick played No. 8 seed Jose Pereira of Brazil, losing 6-1, 6-2, while Shang beat wild card Chiu 6-1, 4-6, 6-2. Darian King of Barbados is the top seed.
Many of the Americans who were playing in Cancun last week have moved on to the Dominican Republic this week. ITF World No. 1 junior Bruno Kuzuhara used a junior exemption to enter the men's tournament, which is different from the ITF program that Shang, Godsick and Colak used this week in Naples. Junior exemption spots are reserved for those who finish in the Top 10 of the previous year's ITF junior rankings and include $25,000 events, while the junior reserved spots are only for the $15,000 level. Kuzuhara will face wild card Jesse Flores(UCF) of Costa Rica in the first round Wednesday. Victor Lilov, who turned 18 this month, qualified for the main draw and will play No. 4 seed Nick Hardt of the Dominican Republic.
For reasons I don't understand, but am all for, the women's $25,000 tournament in the Dominican Republic is a 48-player main draw. Seventeen-year-old Olivia Lincer qualified and won her first round match today; other American qualifiers who advanced to the second round: Christina Rosca (Vanderbilt), Jamilah Snells, Hina Inoue and Anna Rogers(NC State).
4 comments:
48 Draws were encouraged but the ITF to allow more players opportunities to play Post-COVID. There were many weeks with 1-2 events world wide. ITF had players in the Top 150 playing events as low as 25k's so something had to be done to keep the lower ranked players viable.
48 draw allows more 1st Round WTA Points to be awarded and adjusted points for making the last round of the Qualie.
The question that should be asked is why isn't the USTA adopting this format? If you look thru the lower tier of rankings American players are falling off the back end because many countries are using the 48D/32Q format and USA players are fighting thur few if any events, and they are all 32M/32Q.
One would thhk the US is trying to get out of promoting tennis.
Seminole G, it sure does seem like the USTA is receding fast. UTR has taken over in South Florida, the events at Rick Macci's draw 150 plus players every weekend while the USTA events are empty. Never hear anything from USTA high performance or much promoting junior tennis anymore.
Looks like USTA is mostly now just the US Open for revenue for the executive salaries and American players not already established pros are on their own. American players are at a huge disadvantage compared to players from countries with aggressive and active federations.
@ Jon King, Seems you are correct but we've been saying this for a while. BUT since my daughter has been playing ITF's Pro events for while I can see the concrete evidence. Traveling during COVID we have dealt with many of the federation's and the interesting conversations always center wound how facilities with 8 courts can hold Multiple Pro ITF events but that 100 court gold star facility in Orlando can't even hold 2. As for the Jrs, since she finished the recruiting trail last year, many coaches are learning that the USTA events and rankings produced a sub-standard product compared to years past. Look at the college Top 10, look at the Top kids from 2021 that are NOT blowing the doors off college tennis. Wonder how that happens? Probably because the events are weak and the push by PD even weaker.
So as has been said before, why travel to small town USA to get cheated and play for USTA ranking that is pretty much useless. We used to do the Spring Team event in Mobil and the cost for Airfare, Hotel, Rental Car, Meals was always 30%+ more than most of the closer ITF's (Caribbean, South America). Boy if the USTA would just host 2-3-4 events in a row, Jr and Pro imagine.....
Oh well, guess if you ain't gone travel you gotta be rich, back to the way it used to be....
Yes seminoleG, we have been seeing this happen for a while now. Totally agree on USTA events, the fields are weak and the USTA rankings pretty much meaningless now. The top 10-20 rankings mean nothing much, mostly just kids who commit fully to USTAs but not high quality players. Our daughter is going to start with the UTR events at Macci's which now will feed into UTR PTT events during the week. So now in South Florida we will have UTR events with chair umps. Our kid quit tennis for 4 years after being cheated so badly at USTA events.
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