All-Day Rain on Day Two Throws Orange Bowl Schedule into Disarray; Australian Open Men's and Women's Singles Entry Lists Released

©Colette Lewis 2025--

Fort Lauderdale FL--

Sunshine has been in short supply at the Orange Bowl, with play canceled on Monday at 3:30 p.m. due to rain and lightning and Tuesday's matches starting in light drizzle with barely three hours of action on court before heavy rains ended all hope of competition at 1:30 p.m. at the Jimmy Evert Tennis Center at Holiday Park.

This is my 20th Orange Bowl, and although rain isn't unusual at this event, the usual disruption is a heavy rain and clearing skies within a few hours. An all-day rain, unrelenting but not drenching, is something I have never experienced at this event (Junior Orange Bowl is another story) and when it comes at the beginning of the tournament with so many matches, the schedule is thrown into chaos.

With only 22 of the 103 matches on Tuesday's schedule completed, Wednesday's matches will be a wide variety of rounds and age groups. The good news from today is that the boys 16s second round was completed, and their singles tournament remains on schedule, with their eight third round matches slated for Wednesday. 

The second round of the girls 16s, and the first round of both girls and boys 18s, normally completed by Tuesday, are now awaiting completion on Wednesday, with doubles also behind due to the two days of rain.

One of the players fortunate to finish his match before the first rain delay was boys 16s top seed Mason Vaughan, who had to hustle to get under the clubhouse roof as the rain intensified following his 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 win over Sulaiman Syed.

Vaughan, who was also the top seed at last week's IMG Academy International Championships, lost a three-and-a-half-hour semifinal there on the hard courts, with just one day to prepare for the change to green clay.

"That's one of the main things I've been working on over the past year is having these two-week blocks of tournaments and being able to reset, for the second one especially," said the 16-year-old from Austin Texas. "If I go deep in the first one, which I did--I had like seven hours on court one day--I have to recover. So I've been resetting my mind the last couple of days, and it was about just forgetting about last week. I'm glad to be here and really glad to be in the third round."

Switching surfaces from last week to this was not as difficult as it could have been, with Vaughan having access to green clay as well as hard courts at the Brookhaven Tennis Academy.

"I'm training like once a day on clay, and on hard court the other half," said Vaughan. "So for me it was a really easy adjustment. I have a really good balance there, but I know for others it's definitely difficult. Orange Bowl has been one of my main goals, so I've really put an emphasis on clay this year."

Vaughan, who played the 16s at the Veltri Tennis Center in Plantation last year, is impressed by the newly renovated Jimmy Evert Tennis Center.

"That was a great site, but this site is unreal," Vaughan said. "For sure, way better. I haven't had a single bad bounce, even when it hits the line. So I'm really appreciative that they moved it here."

Vaughan will play another 2025 IMG Academy International 16s semifinalist on Wednesday: No. 14 seed Colter Amey. Amey defeated Aidan Conley 6-4, 6-1 this morning. Kahven Singh, who beat IMG Academy International champion Jang Junseo of Korea in the first round, continued his great form, beating 2025 14s Clay Courts champion Joshua Dolinsky 6-1, 6-1 this morning.

As positive as most of the comments have been regarding the tournament's new location, a major complaint has centered on the practice court situation. There are no on-site courts for practice, as there were at Veltri, with players needing to book warmups at two other clubs, which are between 15 and 30 minutes away. 

Those logistics nearly led to the default of Daniel Brand of Israel, who was scheduled at not before 9:30 a.m. on the Chris Evert Stadium against No. 8 seed Ronit Karki. After girls 16s No. 5 seed Olivia de Los Reyes quickly beat Alexandra Korneeva of Armenia 6-1, 6-1, the court was groomed and ready to go and Brand had not yet arrived at the JETC. Karki, who had warmed up at 6:30 a.m. at the JETC after arriving in Fort Lauderdale Monday from his participation in the A Racquet at the Rock exhibition in Newark New Jersey, was ready to go, so Brand was put on the clock. The ITF has a 15-minute grace period once the match is called before a default is issued, and Brand arrived with just five minutes to spare.

When the first rain delay came at 10:30, Karki led 5-1, and although some courts had matches resume between 1:00 and 1:30, the Evert Stadium court was not playable, with that score carrying over until tomorrow.

The draws and order of play for Wednesday are available at the ustaorangebowl.com website. Live scoring and streaming is available via iOnCourt.

Stephanie Myles of OpenCourt recently posted a deep dive on the Orange Bowl fields from five, ten and 15 years ago. The latter would have been played on the hard courts of Crandon Park; the 2020 and 2015 tournaments were both at the Veltri Tennis Center.

The Australian Open men's and women's acceptances were released today, with 16 US men and 16 US women currently in the fields, including wild cards Patrick Kypson and Elli Mandlik.

The women's list is here; the men's list is here.