Urhobo, Joint Advance at W35 in Boca Raton; SoCal Pro Series Begins Next Month; ITA Announces Revamp of National Team Indoor Format; San Diego ITF J300 Videos

At the USTA Pro Circuit W35 in Boca Raton, two 17-year-olds who have been having success continued that trend, with No. 8 seed Maya Joint of Australia, and Akasha Urhobo, a wild card, advancing to the second round. Joint, a University of Texas signee, beat Jessie Aney(North Carolina) 7-6(3), 4-6, 6-4 in three hours and six minutes; Urhobo took out fellow 17-year-old Victoria Osuigwe, a lucky loser, 6-1, 6-4. Joint's second round opponent is 19-year-old qualifier Kayla Cross of Canada, who beat Robin Anderson(UCLA) 6-1, 6-3; Urhobo, who reached the semifinals last week at the W35 in Mississippi, will face No. 6 seed Maria Mateas. 

Top seed Elvina Kalieva lost her first round match 6-3, 6-4 to Maria Kozyreva(St. Mary's) of Russia, who was a Tennis Recuiting Network March Ace for her first ITF World Tennis Tour title last month at a $50K in Brazil. 

At the ATP Challenger 75 in Sarasota, qualifier Stefan Kozlov defeated Ethan Quinn(Georgia) 6-2, 5-7, 6-4 to advance to the quarterfinals, where he'll play Tennys Sandgren(Tennessee), who beat Dmitry Popko of Kazakhstan 6-2, 1-6, 6-2. Mitchell Krueger, a 6-4, 6-0 winner over Martin Damm, will face No. 4 seed Zizou Bergs of Belgium, who beat 17-year-old qualifier Kaylan Bigun by the same score in the final match of the day. Those quarterfinal matches will take place Friday; second round matches for the bottom half are scheduled for Thursday, with just one American, Tristan Boyer(Stanford), still in contention for a quarterfinal spot in that half of the draw.

With a dearth of $15Ks available on the current USTA Pro Circuit calendars, today's announcement that the SoCal Pro Series is back for its third year is a welcome one.  For seven consecutive weeks, beginning on May 27th, there will be an opportunity to compete for ATP and WTA ranking points at familiar venues in Southern California. That other sections have not seen the value of this kind of circuit and sponsored something similar is disappointing, but all credit goes to USTA SoCal for stepping up to the plate to provide their players with abundant opportunities to jump-start their pro careers.  

A complete list of the tournaments and locations, as well as information on the prequalifying events and wild cards (reserved for SoCal players or collegians competing in SoCal) can be found here. 

You can file this under "ITA issues I didn't know needed addressing," but the ITA announced today that the next ITA National Team Indoor Championships will undergo a format change, with dual sites until the semifinals. I have been hearing for many years that there are few schools bidding to host the championships; perhaps this has reached a breaking point now, but all this comes as a surprise to me, so it might take me a while to understand the implications. Here's what will happen in 2025 and beyond. 

• Eight (8) teams will begin at each partner institution (two schools within 200 miles of each other that will serve as co-hosts)
• Each site will host the opening two rounds of play on their campuses
• After the second round, the two (2) semifinalists from the secondary site will travel to the primary site, while all four (4) semifinalists will be given this day off for travel, rest and practice
• For those teams in the back draw, they will remain at the site in which they began and will play their third and final matches during this off day for the semifinalists
• Both co-hosts will receive wild cards into the event and ITA Kickoff Weekend will be reduced from 15 sites (60 teams) to 14 sites (56 teams). The ITA notes that, with declines and passes, the last team accepted into the Kickoff Weekend Draft typically falls between #62-80 in the final rankings leaving a high probability of the final top 60 gaining entry despite this change.

I'm not sure this is ideal(I'm still ambivalent about the NCAAs going from 16 teams to 8 at the finals site) for fans who want to watch as many of the top teams as possible in a three-day stretch, but I guess I'll reserve judgement until I see who is hosting in 2024 and 2025, which the ITA says will be announced on Thursday. Stay tuned.

The ITF J300 San Diego videos are available now and are embedded below. There are two for the girls final, because there is no way to get behind the court the final was played on, with the boys final being played at the same time on Stadium Court, which does have that access. My recap of last month's tournament is available at the Tennis Recruiting Network.