Efremova Ousts Top Seed Jones at ITF J300 College Park, Qualifier Wallman Upsets Cinalli; 17 Americans, Including Pareja, Reach Second Round of USO Qualifying; Tien and Svajda Earn Top 50 Wins; Stanford's Forood Announces Retirement

©Colette Lewis 2024--
College Park MD--

The seeds played their first matches Tuesday at the ITF J300 at the Junior Tennis Champions Center, with Ksenia Efremova pulling off the biggest upset possible on a day when nine seeds made their exit.

The 15-year-old from France showed no signs of being intimidated by the resume of top seed and ITF World No. 2 Emerson Jones of Australia, who won the College Park title last year and reached the Australian Open and Wimbledon girls finals this year. Efremova, who held off a late push by Jones for a 6-2, 6-4 win, had split her previous two matches against the 16-year-old Jones in the 14s two years ago, so she knew she had the game to compete with Jones.

"This match was more mental, I would say," said the Russian-born Efremova, who has trained for years at the Mouratoglou Academy and has represented France since last fall. "I could see when she came on the court, she did two double faults in the first game, I could see she was a little nervous. For me, I don't care about the ranking, it's juniors now, and afterwards we're going to look backwards, it's a great experience, but for me I try to focus on my own game." 

Jones made many more errors that usual, with part of that due to the excellent defense of Efremova, who had no trouble with the depth and pace of Jones, which typically forces opponents into errors. Down 5-2 in the second set, Jones broke and held, saving a match point with a backhand that forced an error after Efremova had come from 0-40 down in her service game. 

Serving for the match a second time at 5-4, Efremova was the steadier of the two, with Jones not able to capitalize on the second serves she was seeing from Efremova.

"I had a good serve on that match point and she just returned very, very good," said Efremova, who won an ITF W15 in July, her second women's World Tennis Tour title. "Full power, nothing to say, just continue. She played amazing that game, not a single mistake and I was a little bit nervous, back in the court, defending, not playing aggressive. And when I was 5-4 up, it was stress, because you just lost two games, she's full of confidence, she played amazing those two games, so it's tough to come back. But I did it, so I'm happy."

Efremova's opponent in the third round is No. 16 seed Claire An, who beat Anna Maria Fedotova of the Dominican Republic 6-1, 7-6(5).

Five other girls seeds lost their first matches of the tournament: No. 8 seed Monika Stankiewicz of Poland was beaten by Trinetra Vijayakumar 3-6, 6-1, 7-5; No. 11 seed Asylzhan Arystanbekova of Kazakhstan fell to Shiho Tsujioka of Japan 6-4, 6-4 and No. 13 seed Hikari Yamamoto lost to USC freshman Jana Hossam Salah of Egypt 6-3, 6-4.

The other two seeds were eliminated by qualifiers. Fourteen-year-old Kristina Liutova of Russia, who lives in Washington, defeated No. 10 seed Reina Goto of Japan 7-6(1), 6-3 for her fourth singles win in the past three days.

Brooke Wallman, who was not seeded in qualifying, won her fifth match in the past four days, beating No. 9 seed Luna Cinalli of Argentina 6-2, 6-7(3), 7-6(5).

Wallman said that the conditioning work she's done recently has contributed to her success in the past four days.

"The fitness I did before coming here definitely helped a lot," said the 16-year-old from Long Island. "I've been working on my stamina off the court as well as playing a good amount on court. I'm kind of used to it at this point."

Wallman also felt she had an advantage over Cinalli, who was playing her first match of the week.

"I definitely felt those matches helped me, because I was able to learn from them and apply it to this match," Wallman said. "I could tell she was nervous and I was more into the tournament already because I'd played a bunch of matches, and that helped me."

Playing in her first J300, Wallman had not seen Cinalli, currently No. 28 in the ITF junior rankings, but she did have a scouting report.

"My coach has a daughter who plays at this level usually," Wallman said of Christasha McNeil's father Christopher. "He's seen her before at tournaments so he gave me some advice before the match, especially about her one-hander, what she likes, what she doesn't like, some of her tendencies. So I didn't come into the match not knowing anything, I knew a little bit at least, and the rest I just figured out along the way."

Wallman trailed 4-1 in the third set tiebreaker, got back even, but Cinalli had the match on her racquet serving at 5-4, after a good return gave her a 5-4 lead with two serves. But she hit a forehand wide, then double faulted to give Wallman a match point. Wallman missed her first serve, but Cinalli netted the return to end the match.

In addition to holding up physically, Wallman was also able to keep her composure in those pressure-packed moments at the end of the match.

"I do a lot of mental training, I have a person I do that with," Wallman. "She's given me a lot of good advice, strategies to use on the court: visualization in between games, running out to each side on changeovers, taking deep breaths, resetting a sloppy point. Remembering you got here, just as much as she did, so just go win it."

Wallman will face Alanis Hamilton in the third round, after Hamilton defeated lucky loser Rioko Umekuni of Japan 6-1, 6-0.

The boys draw went much more to form, with top seed and Australian Open champion Rei Sakamoto of Japan advancing when qualifier Calvin Baierl suffered a hip injury late in the first set and retired after losing it 6-3. No. 2 seed Hayden Jones avoided the fate of his younger sister, defeating wild card Keaton Hance 6-2, 6-4.

The three boys seeds to lose were No. 12 Oliver Bonding of Great Britain, who went out to Tianhui Zhang of China 2-6, 6-4, 6-4; No. 13 seed Maxwell Exsted, who lost to Ludwig Hede of Swedent 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 and No. 15 seed Ian Mayew, who fell to Nicolas Arseneault of Canada 7-6(4), 6-1.

The draws, Wednesday's order of play and a link to live scoring is available at the JTCC ITF tournament page.

The first round of the US Open qualifying is complete, with 17 of the 40 Americans competing over the past two days advancing to the second round.

In addition to the eight players who won matches on Monday-- Mary Stoiana, Valerie Glozman, Varvara Lepchenko, Hanna Chang, Alycia Parks, Usue Arconada, Eliot Spizzirri and Ethan Quinn--nine more picked up wins today: Nishesh Basavareddy, Mitchell Krueger, JJ Wolf, Patrick Kypson, Maxime Cressy, Ann Li, Hailey Baptiste, Elli Mandlik and Julieta Pareja. Basavareddy and Pareja are the only wild cards advancing today, with 19-year-old Basavareddy beating Ugo Blanchet of France 7-5, 6-7(2), 6-4 and 15-year old Pareja defeating Kayla Day 7-6(5), 6-4.

Kalamazoo finalist Jack Kennedy lost to No. 5 seed Maximilian Marterer of Germany 6-3, 6-4 and Roland Garros boys champion Kaylan Bigun fell to No. 13 seed Valentin Vacherot of Monaco 7-6(4), 6-4.

Wednesday's order of play for the second round of qualifying is here.

Qualifier Learner Tien and lucky loser Zachary Svajda both advanced to the round of 16 at the ATP 250 in Winston-Salem Tuesday with their first ATP Top 50 victories.

Svajda took out No. 3 seed and ATP No. 29 Francisco Cerundolo of Argentina 6-4, 6-4. Tien defeated No. 9 seed and ATP No. 49 Fabian Marozsan of Hungary 6-2, 6-7(1), 7-6(2). Svajda's opponent Wednesday is No. 15 seed Pavel Kotov of Russia; Tien will face Thiago Seyboth Wild of Brazil.

Lele Forood, who has led the Stanford women's program for 24 years, announced her retirement today. Forood's numbers are hard to comprehend, with her 560-63 record and 10 NCAA championships setting the standard of excellence this century in women's college tennis. Longtime associate head coach Frankie Brennan will serve as interim head coach, according to today's press release.