Wild Card Grumet Knocks Out Top Seed Woestendick in Second Round of ITF J300 Pan Am Closed, Oyebog Ousts No. 5 Seed Johnston; Quan Advances at Fairfield Challenger; Jovic Faces Mboko at W75 in Edmond

©Colette Lewis 2024--
Spring Texas--

Seeds began competing at the ITF J300 Pan American Regional Championships Tuesday, with only six of the 32 singles seeds eliminated in round two, played under sunny skies at the Giammalva Racquet Club in suburban Houston.

The reigning Kalamazoo 16s champion Gus Grumet pulled off the biggest upset of the day, beating 2023 Kalamazoo 16s champion Cooper Woestendick 6-4, 7-5 on Court No. 1.

Grumet, who received a wild card, came into his first ITF J300 tournament with confidence after receiving a qualifying wild card at the Tiburon Challenger last week and going three sets with Joshua Sheehy(Abilene Christian). 

"It was super fun, a great experience, and I was honored to be able to play," said the left-hander, who turns 17 late next month. "It was a tough match; the biggest difference between the junior level and the pro level is the physicality, being super strong.  I think that was the main difference; I was really happy with how I played."

Grumet, from nearby Mill Valley, had never played a match on the Pro Circuit before Tiburon, so he was excited to make his debut in front of a hometown crowd.

"I put on a show out there, which I was happy about," Grumet said. "I had a lot of people come out to watch me, because it's pretty much my hometown, and I'm really excited that I got that experience."

In his first meeting with Woestendick, Grumet wanted to keep himself in control of the points, but it took him several games to find his range.

"He came out really strong," Grumet said. "He's a really good first ball striker, that's always really tough, and he was attacking my forehand. I struggled at the beginning with that, worked my way into it, played solid, stayed in the rallies. Towards the end, I really found my groove."

After hitting a forehand passing shot for a winner, Grumet had his first match point with Woestendick serving at 4-5, but hit a backhand wide, and Woestendick held for 5-5. After Grumet held for a 6-5 lead, Woestendick was again under pressure and a couple of unforced errors and a backhand passing shot winner gave Grumet two more match points. He only needed one, with Woestendick's backhand error at 15-40 securing the upset.

Because Grumet goes to a traditional high school, he usually isn't able compete on the ITF Junior Circuit. He won the first ITF tournament he played this summer, a J60 the week prior to the Clay Courts, which he also won. His second ITF tournament was the US Open Junior Championships, receiving a wild card in New York as the Kalamazoo 16s winner. This week, he has a few days off from school, which minimizes the stress of missing so many classes.

"This week I got kind of lucky, because there's not a lot of school, but overall, yeah, it's kind of a struggle missing school," said Grumet, who, as a junior, is also planning official visits to college campuses for this fall. "But I'm working through it, and I'm super happy to be here."

On Wednesday Grumet will play 2023 Kalamazoo 16s finalist Lachlan Gaskell, who got an injury walkover from Keaton Hance. 

Joseph Oyebog Junior is something of a celebrity now in junior tennis circles, as he was one of the four players featured in the Amazon Prime series Top Class Tennis documentary that began streaming in July. Oyebog is the only one of that quartet still playing junior tennis; Ariana Pursoo, Stiles Brockett and Stephanie Yakoff are all in college now.

"I've had that a lot," Oyebog said. "People come up to me and ask me for pictures, saying 'oh, I've seen you on the show'. I ask them for their feedback, if they enjoyed it, what could have been better. But there's been a lot of positive reviews, so I can't complain. I'm just grateful to have been chosen and have that opportunity."

Oyebog admits that his results since that documentary was filmed, at the end of 2022, have not been what he hoped for or expected, but his 7-5, 6-4 win over No. 5 seed Noah Johnston showed just how high his ceiling can be.

"I've struggled a lot the past almost two years now," said Oyebog, who turns 17 in December. "It's been working on a lot of the mental side, changes, accepting that tennis is tennis and you're going to have ups and downs." 

The ups were all there in today's match, and he gave very few free points to his fellow left-hander. Although an Oyebog serve makes a sound that's just not heard at junior tournaments, and his ground strokes are nearly as lethal, he often misses too many first serves and in the ensuing rallies, sprays balls if a point is extended.

There was none of that today, with the serve and the pace on his groundstrokes just too much for Johnston.

Oyebog gives credit for that serve to his father, a former professional who played Davis Cup for Cameroon and now has an academy there, while Junior trains at IMG.

"My dad had a pretty big serve," said Oyebog, who mentioned that his own serve was clocked at 139 mph last summer. "I think at one point he had the fifth fastest serve in the world. All of that just comes from him, his background as a tennis player."

Oyebog will play No. 10 seed Maximus Dussault, who ended the winning streak of Corpus Christi J60 champion Andrew Johnson, a wild card, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.

The third unseeded boy to make the third round is Ryan Cozad, who defeated No. 16 seed Jack Satterfield 6-3, 1-6, 7-6(4).

Top seed Jagger Leach defeated wild card Gavin Goode 6-2, 6-3.

Three unseeded girls also reached the third round, including 13-year-old Raya Kotseva, who defeated No. 7 seed Capucine Jauffret 6-4, 4-6, 6-2.  Kotseva will face qualifier Sara Shumate in the third round; Shumate defeated No. 11 seed Alanis Hamilton 4-6, 6-4, 6-3. Isabelle DeLuccia is the third unseeded girl in the final 16; she defeated No. 14 seed Kenzie Nguyen 7-6(5), 6-4.

Top seeds Thea Frodin and Annika Penickova won their second round matches in straight sets, and so did No. 3 seed Nadia Lagaev of Canada, but Lagaev's match with wild card Elena Mireles was a long, contentious battle. Lagaev served for the match at 5-4, but couldn't close it out, and trailed 4-2 in the second set tiebreaker, only to take five of the next six points to earn the victory.

There are four unseeded girls doubles teams in the quarterfinals, but top seeds Maya Iyengar and Aspen Schuman and No. 2 seeds Claire An and Shannon Lam are through.  Only one unseeded team remains in the boys doubles quarterfinals.

There are four USTA Pro Circut tournaments this week, which I won't have time to cover as extensively as usual due to being onsite here in Houston. 

The men have the ATP Challenger 75 in Fairfield California and the $25,000 tournament in Louisville Kentucky. 

Rudy Quan, a freshman at UCLA, won his third main draw Challenger match today in Fairfield, after two qualifying wins Sunday and Monday. The 18-year-old from Thousand Oaks California defeated Guy Den Ouden(Pepperdine), who won a Challenger title last month in Europe, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4. Quan will play 2023 NCAA singles champion Ethan Quinn(Georgia), the No. 8 seed, Thursday.

The women are competing at the W75 in Edmond Oklahoma and the W35 in Bakersfield California. Sixteen-year-old Iva Jovic will be looking to extend her USTA Pro Circuit winning streak to 11 in a first round match Wednesday with Victoria Mboko of Canada. Jovic, who won the W75 in Rancho Santa Fe on Sunday, beat Mboko in the final of the W35 in Berkeley two weeks ago.