Stoiana and Spizzirri Claim ITA All-American Titles; Svajda, Kessler, Jovic and Papoe Earn USTA Pro Circuit Titles

One of the women's finalists at the ITA All-American Championships in Cary NC was going to make history, and it was No. 2 seed Mary Stoiana of Texas A&M who put her school on the winners' list after a hard-fought 3-6, 7-6(5), 6-1 over Miami's Alexa Noel.

Stoiana, a junior from Connecticut, wasn't sharp to start the match, with Noel holding on to her one early break to take the first set. Stoiana was broken to start the second set, but Noel, the No. 3 seed, lost the next game on a deciding point for 1-1. After two holds, Stoiana was again down a break, losing a deciding point to give Noel a 3-2 lead, but Noel couldn't convert her game point at 40-30 and lost another deciding point. Stoiana then held from 15-40 down and Noel began a downward spiral, losing the next game without requiring much from Stoiana.

Stoiana wasn't able to serve out the set at 5-3 however, and three rare holds later a tiebreaker was required to decide the set.

Stoiana was determined to come forward and stayed with that strategy, taking the tiebreaker, in which neither player led by more than one point, with a minibreak and hold in the final two points.

"In the second set I'm not going to say that it changed all of a sudden," Stoiana told Cracked Racquets' Alex Gruskin. "It was still gradual, doesn't feel great but stick it out, and things started going my way. I stuck to the plans Jordan(Szabo) and I were strategizing and I squeezed it out...Even though I was up 5-3, I never really felt like, yeah, I've got it now...But I squeezed it out and I'm feeling great and I knew that she was feeling the pressure, and things started going my way in the third set."

Stoiana relaxed and began to miss less, while Noel's unforced errors increased as she tried to make something happen. Noel held to start the second set, but Stoiana earned breaks in Noel's next two service games, held for 5-1, then broke for the title.

"It means so much," said Stoiana, who lost in the All-American qualifying as a freshman and reached the quarterfinals last year. "I played in it my last two fall seasons and each time I felt I was inching closer and closer. Third time's the charm I guess."

Stoiana is scheduled to play the $25,000 women's USTA Pro Circuit tournament in Florence South Carolina next week.

The women's doubles title went to Oklahoma's Dana Guzman and Alina Shcherbinina, who defeated Virginia's Melodie Collard and Annabelle Xu of Virginia 6-2, 6-2. Guzman and Shcherbinina won three qualifying matches to reach the main draw, then five more matches to claim the program's first ITA All-American title.

In the women's singles consolation final, Oklahoma State's Anastasiya Komar defeated Auburn's Carolyn Ansari 6-4, 4-6, 6-4.

Eliot Spizzirri, who announced early last month that he was returning for his fifth year at Texas, came into the tournament as the preseason No. 1 and the top seed, but still looking for his first collegiate major title. He got it today, defeating No. 3 seed Murphy Cassone of Arizona State 6-4, 6-3 after trailing in both sets. 

Down 4-2 in the first set, Spizzirri won the final four games; down 2-0 in the second set, he won four straight games to take the lead. Cassone could not win an important point when he needed it down the stretch, losing his last three service games of the match on deciding points. 

Spizzirri and Cleeve Harper, the top seeds in doubles, fell short in this afternoon's final, with Ohio State's Robert Cash and JJ Tracy winning the nearly two-hour contest 6-3, 7-6(13). It's the second ITA All-American doubles title for Cash, who won it with Matej Vocel in 2021, and revenge for Cash and Vocel's loss to Harper and Richard Ciamarra in the 2022 NCAA doubles final. 

The men's singles consolation title went to Arizona's Colton Smith, who defeated Jeffrey von der Schulenburg of Virginia 1-6, 6-3, 7-5.

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

Three Americans captured the three biggest tournaments on the USTA Pro Circuit this week, with two-time Kalamazoo champion Zachary Svajda defending his title at the Tiburon California Challenger; former Florida All-American Mccarthy Kessler claiming her first pro singles title at the $60,000 tournament in Rome Georgia and 15-year-old Iva Jovic earning her first pro title at the $25,000 tournament in Redding California.

The 20-year-old Svajda, seeded No. 3, defeated unseeded Adam Walton(Tennessee) of Australia 6-2, 6-2 for his third ATP Challenger, all coming since he won his first in Tiburon last October. 

Kessler is the rare player whose first USTA Pro Circuit title comes at a $60,000 tournament, but she has won a lot of qualifying matches at the $25K and $60K level and has made good use of the few wild cards she has received this year. This week, the 24-year-old from Georgia picked up her second WTA Top 100 win, over top seed Taylor Townsend; today she defeated unseeded Grace Min 6-2, 6-1 in just over an hour. Kessler is now up to a career-high of 240 in the WTA rankings, and will be in the lead in the USTA's Australian Open Wild Card Challenge, which began this week for women. 

Jovic had reached the final of a $15,000 tournament last summer as a 14-year-old in the SoCal Pro Series, but an injury kept her out of competition most of this spring and summer. She returned to compete in the US Open Junior Championships, but with no match play for months, lost in the first round. 

This week, as a wild card in Redding, Jovic suggested that she was fully recovered from that layoff, and her 6-4, 6-2 win today over 18-year-old Sayaka Ishii of Japan proved it. She defeated an in-form Hanna Chang, the No. 6 seed, 6-2, 6-1 last night and lost only one set in her five victories, in the quarterfinals to Jessie Aney(UNC). Jovic was expected to compete in the Florence SC $25K next week, but given her success this week, may not want to add more matches while still early in her comeback. 

Seventeen-year-olds Clervie Ngounoue and Liv Hovde won the doubles title late last night, defeating No. 4 seeds Kayla Cross of Canada and Maria Fernanda Herazo Gonzalez of Colombia 6-3, 7-5. It's the third pro doubles title for Ngounoue and the first for Hovde.

At the $15,000 men's USTA Pro Circuit tournament in Ithaca New York, No. 2 seed Radu Papoe of Romania ended the winning streak of Liam Draxl of Canada, beating the top seed 3-6, 6-1, 6-2 in today's final. Draxl, the former University of Kentucky All-American, had won the Champaign $15K and the Albuquerque $15K in the past three weeks. The 21-year-old Papoe, a junior at Cornell, the tournament's host, now has three titles, all earned this year. He won his first at a $15K in Ithaca in January.