ITF World Junior Finals Fields Include Americans Ngounoue and Blanch; Basavareddy Reaches First Challenger Quarterfinal; Blake Defeats Brantmeier, Pre-Qualifier Landau Advances at ITA All-American Championships

The ITF announced the participants in this month's ITF Junior World Finals in Chengdu China, which is being held for the first time since 2019.  The top eight boys and the top eight girls in the post-US Open ITF junior rankings are invited to compete in the event, which features two round robin groups with the top four players advancing to the knock-out round semifinals. 

The boys field:

Rodrigo Pacheco (MEX)

Yaroslav Demin(RUS)

Yi Zhou (CHN)

Darwin Blanch (USA)

Iliyan Radulov (BUL)

Federico Cina (ITA)

Arthur Gea (FRA)

Branko Djuric (SRB)

Alternate: Tianhui Zhang (CHN)

Those eligible but not participating are No. 1 and US Open champion Joao Fonseca of Brazil, No. 4 Cooper Williams and No. 5 Learner Tien of the United States, No. 6 and Wimbledon champion Henry Searle of Great Britain and No. 10 Juan Carlos Prado Angelo of Bolivia.

The girls field:

Alina Korneeva(RUS)

Clervie Ngounoue (USA)

Renata Jamrichova (SVK)

Sara Saito (JPN)

Sayaka Ishii (JPN)

Tereza Valentova (CZE)

Ena Koike (JPN)

Laura Samsonova (CZE)

Alternate: Kaitlin Quevedo (USA)

Those eligible but not participating are Lucciana Perez Alarcon of Peru, the Texas A&M freshman, and Mayu Crossley of Japan.

The tournament begins on October 16th (although the tournament website gives the starting date as October 18th) and ends on October 22nd. Today's ITF release announcing the fields is here.

Eighteen-year-old Stanford sophomore Nishesh Basavareddy advanced to his first ATP Challenger 75 quarterfinal today in Tiburon, with the qualifier defeating No. 8 seed Tennys Sandgren(Tennessee) 6-2, 3-1 ret.  It's the second consecutive day that Basavareddy has benefitted from a retirement, with his first round victory over last week's Challenger champion Abdullah Shelbayh(Florida) of Georgia yesterday achieved by a 6-0. 4-2 ret. score.  Basavareddy will face the winner of tonight's match between defending champion Zachary Svajda[3] and Steve Johnson(USC). Basavareddy defeated Johnson for his first Challenger victory back in July.

The first round is complete at the ITA All-American Championships, with two seeds ousted in the women's tournament in Cary NC and five seeds exiting at the men's tournament in Tulsa OK.

Stanford fifth-year Angelica Blake defeated No. 4 seed Reese Brantmeier of North Carolina 6-4, 5-7, 7-5  and Casie Wooten of  Wake Forest beat No. 7 seed Anastasiya Komar of Oklahoma State 6-2, 7-6(4).

Wooten was one of five qualifiers, out of eight total, who advanced to the round of 16. The other four are Jessica Alsola(Cal), 2021 A-A champion Sarah Hamner(South Carolina), Dana Guzman(Oklahoma) and Ange Oby Kajuru(Oklahoma State).

Top seed and defending champion Fiona Crawley of North Carolina had a difficult time shaking BYU's Yujia Huang, but got through in straight sets, 7-5, 6-4.  No. 2 seed Mary Stoiana of Texas A&M needed three sets to advance past pre-qualifier Sophie Abrams of NC State 6-1, 1-6, 6-1.

Five qualifiers also reached the second round at the men's All-Americans, including sophomore Sam Landau of Indiana, who as a pre-qualifier, has now won eight matches in the past five days to reach the round of 32. Other men's qualifiers posting wins today are Jack Anthrop(Ohio State), Luciano Tacchi(Wake Forest), Jay Friend(Arizona) and Wojtek Marek(USC). Anthrop and Landau will meet in the second round Thursday.

Anthrop was the only one who faced a seed, advancing when No. 9 seed Geronimo Busleiman of Utah was defaulted trailing 6-3, 1-0. 

No. 6 seed Alex Bernard of Ohio State lost to Nikola Slavic of Mississippi, No. 7 seed Karlis Ozolins of Illinois was beaten by TCU's Sebastian Gorzny 6-2, 6-1 and No. 9 seeds Jeffrey von der Schulenburg of Virginia and Pierre-Yves Bailly of Texas also lost. Von der Schulenburg was beaten by Jack Pinnington Jones of TCU 6-2, 6-2 and Bailly lost to Ronnie Hohmann of Michigan State 6-4, 6-2. 

Top seed Eliot Spizzirri of Texas defeated qualifier Lodewijk Weststrate of USC 7-5, 6-2 and No. 2 seed Chris Rodesch of Virginia beat Tyler Stice of Auburn 6-3, 6-2.

Michigan's Ozan Baris, who was playing in the Tiburon Challenger main draw Tuesday, made it to Tulsa in time for his first round match and chalked up a win, beating qualifier Cleeve Harper of Texas 7-5, 6-4.

The first round of doubles is still in progress in Tulsa, where they've had to move indoors due to rain. The women's first round of doubles is complete, with No. 1 seeds Reese Brantmeier and Elizabeth Scotty of North Carolina and No. 2 seeds Fiona Crawley and Carson Tanguilig of North Carolina (who beat Brantmeier and Scotty in the NCAA final this year) through to Thursday's round of 16.

The women's draws are here; the men's draws are here.

Cracked Racquets is providing their Cross-Court coverage of both men's and women's All-Americans at their YouTube channel.