Jovic Reaches USTA Pro Circuit W35 Final in Texas; No. 2 TCU Men Beat No. 10 Texas 4-3; Top Seeds CMS and Chicago Meet Again for D-III Women's Team Indoor Title

Sixteen-year-old Iva Jovic posted her best win by ranking today at the USTA Pro Circuit W35 tournament in Spring Texas, beating No. 2 seed and WTA No. 279 Varvara Lepchenko 6-1, 7-5 to reach her second W35 singles final. A lucky loser this week, just as McCartney Kessler was last week before claiming the WTA 125 in Mexico, Jovic hasn't lost a set since the 14-12 match tiebreaker in the final round of qualifying Tuesday.

Jovic's opponent in the final will be former UCLA star Ena Shibahara of Japan, who has been as high as No. 4 in the WTA doubles rankings, and won the 2022 mixed doubles title at Roland Garros. Now 26, Shibahara is playing more regularly in singles these past 14 months, competing in singles in 17 tournaments last year, including some WTA events where she was competing in doubles and received entry as an alternate in singles qualifying. She hasn't played doubles this year since the Australian Open. The 26-year-old, who grew up in Southern California, just like Jovic, but switched her national representation after leaving UCLA in 2018, defeated top seed Maria Mateas(Duke) 7-6(7), 7-6(6) in today's semifinals.

This is Shibahara's first Pro Circuit singles final; Jovic, ten years younger, is already playing her third, having lost in at a $15K in 2022 and won a $25K last fall. Jovic received a wild card into the women's qualifying draw at the BNP Paribas Open, and is set to face No. 4 seed Taylor Townsend; it's hard to see how she can play there if the first round is Sunday. (Update: only 16 of the 24 first round matches are Sunday, so Jovic will play her first round Monday).

In the doubles final today, top seeds Whitney Osuigwe and Alana Smith(NC State) took the title, beating alternates Malkia Ngounoue and Thaisa Pedretti of Brazil 6-4, 6-4. Although they had 14 Pro Circuit titles between them before today's, it's Osuigwe and Smith's first as a team.

Jake Fearnley at 2023 NCAAs 
photo credit: Conor Kvatek/USTA

The men's Division I dual matches are certainly delivering the drama this weekend. Less than 24 hours after No. 8 Virginia defeated No. 3 Wake Forest 4-3 in Charlottesville, No. 2 TCU took out No. 10 Texas 4-3 in Fort Worth, with the match coming down to a third set at No. 1 singles.

TCU won the doubles point, taking line 1 quickly and line 3 with a late break and hold after Texas had won at line 2.

TCU was certainly happy to have that point on the board when they lost five of the six first sets in singles, meaning that they would have to win two matches in third sets. They got one split, with Lui Maxted forcing a third with Cleeve Harper at line 5, and Sebastian Gorzny closed out his match over Pierre-Yves Bailly 7-6(6), 6-1 at line 4 to make it 2-0, but there wasn't another obvious candidate for a split. Texas's Jonah Braswell closed out Tomas Jirousek 6-4, 6-0 at line 6 to put the Longhorns on the board, but a minute later, Maxted made it 3-1 TCU with a 1-6, 6-3, 6-2 win over Harper. A minute after that, Micah Braswell closed out TCU's Jack Pinnington Jones 6-3, 7-5 at line 2 to make it 3-2, and the Longhorns had won the first sets in the remaining two matches, which were both deep in the third.

TCU had to win one of those two third sets to have a chance, and they were a point away from a loss, with Jake Fearnley serving at 5-6 in the second set tiebreaker against Texas's Eliot Spizzirri at line 1. But Fearnley won that point, and Spizzirri made two unforced forehand errors in the next two points, sending that match to a third.

It hardly mattered that Gilles Bailly tied the team score at 3 with a 7-6(2), 7-5 win over Pedro Vives at line 3; rather it simplified the narrative and focused all the attention on the match between Fearnley and Spizzirri, which was at 1-1 in third, three hours into the dual match.

There were no breaks of serve until Spizzirri fell behind 15-40 at 4-all and was broken, with Fearnley serving out the match without much drama. It was the second time this year that Fearnley had saved a dual match point; in TCU's 4-3 win over Tennessee earlier last month, he had saved a match point and come back to post a win over Johannus Monday that extended the match, with Jirousek eventually providing the fourth point in that thriller.

This match was a non-conference contest; the Longhorns and Horned Frogs will meet three weeks from tomorrow in Austin for their conference match.

The final of the ITA Division III Women's Team Indoor Championships is set for Sunday, and it's a familiar one, with Chicago and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps playing for the title for the second year in a row. 

No. 2 seed Chicago, who beat CMS 5-1 last year to claim their second straight Team Indoor title, defeated No. 3 seed Pomona-Pitzer 5-2 in today's semifinals in Nicholasville Kentucky. Top seed Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, who has won the past two NCAA team titles, defeated No. 5 seed Johns Hopkins 6-1 in the other semifinal. CMS's only loss in 2023 was in the Team Indoor final; they beat Chicago in the NCAA team final.