Nava and McNally Win US Open Wild Card Race, Among Six Americans Awarded Main Draw WCs; Eight Juniors Receive USO Qualifying Wild Cards; TRN's 14s Nationals Coverage; New J100 in Maryland; Blanch Drops Three-Setter to Cassone at Sumter Challenger
The USTA announced the US Open wild cards this morning, with Emilio Nava and Caty McNally receiving their main draw entries via the USTA's annual Wild Card Challenge, while Alyssa Ahn and Darwin Blanch earned their wild cards via their titles at the USTA 18s Nationals Championships. Stefan Dostanic(Wake Forest) and Valerie Glozman(Stanford) had won their wild cards at the USTA's Collegiate Playoff, and with Australia (Tristan Schoolkate and Talia Gibson) and France (Caroline Garcia and Valentin Royer) receiving the reciprocal wild cards, only three discretionary wild cards remained.
Those went to Brandon Holt(USC), Nishesh Basavareddy(Stanford and Tristan Boyer(Stanford), the next three Americans in the current ATP rankings and Julieta Pareja, Clervie Ngounoue and Venus Williams on the women's side. Holt is the next player in if there is another withdrawal before the qualifying begins Monday, so if they continue to go use the current ATP rankings as the criteria, Eliot Spizzirri(Texas) would be next to assume Holt's wild card.
Colton Smith, who declined his opportunity to participate in June's USTA Collegiate Playoffs, did not receive a main draw wild card, so he lost his gamble that he would have enough success this summer to earn a main draw wild card.
The qualifying wild cards feature a number of juniors and former college players, with Columbia rising senior Michael Zheng, who earned his wild card as the USTA Collegiate Playoffs finalist, the only current collegian in either the men's or women's field.
The men's qualifying wild cards: Zheng, Andres Martin(Georgia Tech), Tyler Zink(Oklahoma State), Patrick Maloney(Michigan), Garrett Johns(Duke), Martin Damm, Jack Kennedy, Benjamin Willwerth and Jack Satterfield.
The women's qualifying wild cards: Fiona Crawley(North Carolina), Hina Inoue, Monika Ekstrand(Stanford), Ayana Akli(South Carolina) Akasha Urhobo, Alexis Nguyen, Mary Stoiana(Texas A&M), Kristina Penickova and Maya Iyengar.
Willwerth, Kennedy and Kristina Penickova were entered in next week's ITF J300 in College Park and would have been Top 4 seeds, but obviously will be withdrawing to take advantage of this opportunity.
The final US Open Wild Card Challenge Standings:
The Tennis Recruiting Network's coverage of the USTA National 14s championships is now available, with Jiarui Zhang of Texas taking the boys title and Daniella Sales of New York claiming the girls championship.
My recap of Marcel Latak's run to the title in Kalamazoo will go up Thursday morning, with my 18s article scheduled for Friday morning.
Many of the players in the draws of this week's new ITF J100 in Chestertown Maryland traveled there directly from Kalamazoo and San Diego. The quarterfinals are set for Thursday, with eight American girls facing off. Sobee Oak defeated top seed Riyo Yoshia of Japan 7-5, 6-2 and will play Kendall Smith, who beat No. 5 seed Sarah Stoyanov. Shristi Selvan defeated No. 3 seed Reiley Rhodes 4-2, ret. and will play No. 7 seed Londyn McCord. Katie Spencer will play San Diego 16s finalist Paige Wygodzki, the No. 14 seed, and No. 2 seed Maggie Sohns will face No. 9 seed Anastasia Pleskun.
Only four of the boys quarterfinalists are American. Noble Renfrow[10], who won the bronze ball in 18s doubles and the Stowe Sportsmanship award, will face Jens Holger Nissen of Denmark, who lost to 18s finalist Jack Satterfield in the round of 64 in Kalamazoo. No. 3 seed Carel Ngounoue will play Matthew Shapiro[9] in the only all-US quarterifnal. Balthazar Orsanice[11] will face No. 4 seed Xavier Massotte of Canada and Kalamazoo 16s bronze ball winner Jerrid Gaines Jr will face No. 2 seed Oliver Sanders of the Czech Republic.
Darwin Blanch, who received a wild card into the ATP Challenger 125 in Sumter South Carolina, played a close three-set match with ATP No. 173 Murphy Cassone but dropped a 7-5, 3-6, 6-3 decision to the former Arizona State All-American. Blanch had 15 aces, but lost his serve for the only time in the final set at 3-4 and Cassone served out the first round victory. Cassone, Kaylan Bigun(UCLA) and lucky loser Karl Poling(Princeton, North Carolina) are the only Americans reaching the second round. Poling defeated former ATP No. 21 Dan Evans of Great Britain 1-6, 6-4, 6-4 today.
5 comments:
"Holt is the next player in if there is another withdrawal before the qualifying begins Monday, so if they continue to go use the current ATP rankings as the criteria, Eliot Spizzirri(Texas) would be next to assume Holt's wild card." They obviously did not consider ranking in deciding the qualifying wildcards. Aidan Mayo is ranked higher than Zink, Damm (whom he beat 2 weeks ago), Maloney, and Johns. And he even has a Challenger title under his belt unlike the others (who have a lesser ITF title or two). It looks to me like there is a good amount of weight being given to former college tennis players when players like Aidan have been slighted in that calculus for whatever reason.
I was shocked by the number of discretionary qualifying wildcards were given to U18 players (4 on women's side, 2 on men's side) provided on both the men's and women's side, especially at the expense of NCAA runner-ups (Bennett and Baris).
It’s incorrect and lazy to say Colton Smith “lost his gamble.” First, the gamble would have been to put all his eggs into one event in Orlando on hard at the expense of playing Roland Garros and Wimbledon plus additional warm up events. Secondly, are you sure he “lost”. Let’s look at the math. A first rd WC in NYC is worth $110k. Colton lost first rd of Qs in RG and 2nd rd of Qs in Wimbledon. He made about $23k in Paris. You also have to account for the Challengers he played prior to Wimbledon that would have been skipped to play Orlando. He made £51k on grass which is about $65-70k depending on your exchange rate. You also have to include the US Open qualies which is $27.5 for first round.
Add that all up. $23k Paris, $65k Grass. $27.5 k Qualies and he made $115.5k by skipping Orlando. Plus he gained valuable ATP points. Imagine if he had played better at RG and Wimbledon.
So Colton did not lose and the actual gamble would have been skipping the European swing.
Hard to see how the move of NCAA singles to the Fall could have gone worse on the men's side. The guy who won is not in the US Open. He's overshadowed by the guy who won the US Open wild card playoff, a guy who skipped the Fall championship and didn't even play college tennis in the Fall. The guy who was probably the best college tennis player in the dual match season skipped the playoff because their scheduling of it was bad, and conflicted with the kinds of professional opportunities top players look to play in the summer. And neither the Fall championship nor the US Open wildcard playoff generated any meaningful buzz for the sport - if anything the buzz and engagement was way worse for both than for the usual May championship.
I assume they're committed to this for some number of years but someone needs to step up and admit they screwed up and try to fix this ASAP
Colin, I couldn’t agree more.
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