Blanch Qualifies for Winston-Salem Open; ITF J300 College Park Qualifiers Ready for Monday's Main Draw; US Open Qualifying, with 36 Americans, Begins Monday

©Colette Lewis 2025--

College Park MD--

Before I get into my coverage of today's final round of qualifying at the ITF J300 in College Park, there are Winston-Salem ATP 250 qualifying results to highlight, with Kalamazoo champion Darwin Blanch among the quartet reaching the main draw, just a week after claiming the 18s title.

Blanch defeated qualifying No. 4 seed and ATP No. 104 Valentin Royer of France 4-6, 6-2, 7-6(5), with 12 aces, including one that reached 136 mph. 

I obviously didn't see the match, but the Winston-Salem Open tournament press aide was kind enough to provide me with a short audio of his post-match interview with Blanch, who will be playing the US Open main draw with his Kalamazoo wild card. Blanch, who told me last Sunday that he hasn't played much with expectations, as he had to do in Kalamazoo as the top seed, was back to being the underdog in this weekend's qualifying, albeit with all the confidence of his recent title.

 "Usually when the match is more tense, I usually play better," said Blanch, who received a qualifying wild card. "I've always liked playing in those moments, so it's amazing. Obviously US Open is huge, it's definitely going to be the biggest tournament I've played in my career so far, but this will give me confidence for sure next week. I'm super happy and if I can go match by match, get my level better, and if play my game, I can do pretty good."

The 17-year-old left-hander, who is from Florida, but trains at the Ferrero Academy in Spain, will play Borna Coric of Croatia in the main draw.

Also advancing to the main draw are top qualifying seed Aleks Vukic(Illinois) of Australian, a 6-4, 6-2 winner over Karl Poling(Princeton, UNC); Nishesh Basavareddy(Stanford), who beat No. 2 qualifying seed Tristan Schoolkate of Australia 6-4, 6-3, and wild card DK Suresh, the Wake Forest rising senior from India, who defeated Alejandro Tabilo of Chile, the No. 3 seed in qualifying, 1-6, 7-6(4), 6-3. Vukic faces wild card Stefan Dostanic(USC, Wake Forest); Basavareddy plays Raphael Collignon of Belgium, and Suresh faces Mariano Navone of Argentina.

It was steamy today for the final round of qualifying for the College Park ITF J300 at the Junior Tennis Champions Center, with the heat index approaching 100 degrees by the time the girls took the court at midday.

Karlin Schock, the No. 1 seed in qualifying, admitted that the conditions weren't ideal for her, but she managed to reset after losing four straight games at the end of the second set to beat Sobee Oak 6-3, 5-7, 10-7.

"The day just kept getting hotter and I tried to stay in it as much as I could physically," said the 16-year-old from Wisconsin. "I tried to regroup a little bit before the tiebreaker. I knew I had to really focus, and get a good start, and that helped me."

Schock has played Oak often, but thought her opponent was more aggressive than usual while she was unable to come to the net as much as she normally would.

"Usually I come in a little more, but it was harder for me today, I wasn't feeling the greatest," Schock said. "She was playing well today, going more for her shots than she normally does, so it was definitely a battle."

Although Schock and Oak were at 6-all at the second changeover, Schock won the next three points to give herself some breathing room, and unlike the second set, when she served for the match at 5-3, she was able to close it out without much drama.

Schock will face Saturday's Chestertown ITF J100 champion Maggie Sohns in the first round Monday.

Other girls qualifying for the main draw are Sena Yoon, Baotong Xu of China, Kristina Liutova of Russia, Camille Allegre, and Audrey Kao of Taiwan.

Tyler Lee was not planning to play this week, but received an offer of a wild card into qualifying at the last minute, and he advanced to the main draw with a 1-6, 6-0, 10-5 win over Gabriel Jessup.

"I applied for a wild card pretty late and they confirmed it on Thursday," said the 16-year-old from Tustin California. "So I flew red-eye, got in Friday morning at 7 a.m. with an hour of sleep. I practiced for maybe an hour with a friend, and honestly, I didn't have high hopes going into [qualifying]. I wasn't in the best shape, just finished Kalamazoo, and working on some new technique too. It was tough, but the mentality of 'I'm just here to get better' was a good mindset, because it took a lot of pressure off the result and helped me focus on what I was doing."

Lee beat No. 10 seed Matthew Shapiro in the first round of qualifying 6-2, 4-6, 10-5 and received a retirement win from Jens Holger Nissen of Denmark in the second round Saturday evening.  Against Jessup, it was a strategic adjustment that turned the match around.

"I went into the match just trying to hit him off the court, but he let me know I wasn't going to be able to do that," Lee said. "The second set I changed my game plan, trying to do what he was doing best, which was moving the ball and just staying in points. That's not generally my style, but that is something that I can tap into when I have to. In the second set, in these conditions on that court especially--it was pretty slow--my regular game style wasn't going to work. I slowed down the pace a lot, he loved my fast tempo, but this is my version of changing up pace and variety. Most people think of variety as slices and angles and drop shots, but they don't think of the speed of the ball and the height of the ball."

With the strategy successful, Lee was confident in the tiebreaker. 

"There was no need to change anything, because that was definitely the smartest game style for that situation," Lee said. "If I had lost that third set playing that way I wouldn't have been mad, because that was my best possible chance. It was a game of probability and I won it."

Lee plays Kerem Yilmaz of Turkey in the first round Monday.

The other five boys qualifying for the main draw are Xingyu(Michael) Chen, a JTCC student from China; Kahven Singh, Rafael Ferreira of Brazil and Navneet Raghuram. Chen let a 9-6 lead in the match tiebreaker with Gus Grumet slip away, but he converted his fourth match point to win it 7-6(2), 4-6, 11-9.

The seeds won't play until Tuesday, but the match of day for US tennis fans will be in the boys draw, when Michael Antonius and wild card Marcel Latak meet again, after their dramatic quarterfinal in the Kalamazoo 16s, which eventual champion Latak won 3-6, 7-5, 6-2 after trailing 6-3, 4-1. 

Live scoring and live streaming links, as well as the draws and order of play, are available at the JTCC tournament site.

The draws for the US Open qualifying were posted this afternoon, with 21 Americans in the women's draw and 15 Americans in the men's draw, all hoping to win three matches to reach the main draw. 

It appears Hina Inoue got into qualifying on her own ranking at the last minute, with Amelia Honer(UC-Santa Barbara) receiving Inoue's qualifying wild card.

Monday's US Open first qualifying matches featuring Americans:

Andres Martin[WC] v Viktor Durasovic(NOR)

Jack Satterfield[WC] v Jay Clarke(GBR)

Patrick Maloney[WC] v Elias Ymer(SWE)

Murphy Cassone v Thiago Monteiro(BRA)

Christopher Eubanks v Marco Trungelliti(ARG)

Madison Brengle v Varvara Gracheva(FRA)

Lauren Davis v Hina Inoue

Katie Volynets[7] v Sofia Costoulas(BEL)

Akasha Urhobo[WC] v Dalma Galfi[4](HUN)

Kayla Day v Ena Shibahara[20](JPN)

Amelia Honer[WC] v Whitney Osuigwe

Kristina Penickova[WC] v Mai Hontama(JPN)

Monika Ekstrand[WC] v Alina Charaeva(RUS)

Claire Liu v Katarzyna Kawa[16](POL)

Alexis Nguyen[WC] v Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva[28](AND)

Fiona Crawley[WC] v Louisa Chirico

Bernada Pera[10] v Emerson Jones(AUS)

Tuesday's matches:

Varvara Lepchenko[22] v Janice Tjen(INA)

Sachia Vickery v Anastasiia Sobolieva(UKR)

Mary Stoiana[WC] v Shuai Zhang[9](CHN)

Maya Iyengar[WC] v Darja Vidmanova(CZE)

Elizabeth Mandlik v Jessika Ponchet[25](FRA)

Ayana Akli[WC] v Eva Vedder(NED)

Mitchell Kreuger v Santiago Rodriguez Taverna(ARG)

Michael Zheng[WC] v Yasutaka Uchiyama(JPN)

Martin Damm[WC] v Stefano Travaglia(ITA)

Jack Kennedy[WC] v Thiago Tirante[24](ARG)

Zachary Svajda[22] v August Holmgren(DEN)

Benjamin Willwerth[WC] v Otto Virtanen[9](FIN)

Garrett Johns[WC] v Colton Smith[27]

Patrick Kypson v Bernard Tomic(AUS)

Tyler Zink[WC] v Rei Sakamoto(JPN)