Five Qualifiers Among 38 Americans in Australian Open Draws; Baker's Dozen of US Juniors Begin ITF Australian Swing in Traralgon; Kudla Joins Coaching Staff at JTCC

Qualifying for the Australian Open concluded Thursday in Melbourne, with four US men and one US woman advancing to the main draw.

Columbia's two-time NCAA champion Michael Zheng had to save a match point after taking a 7-1 lead in the third set tiebreaker against Lukas Klein of Slovakia, but the 21-year-old from New Jersey will make his ATP and slam main draw debut after a 4-6, 6-3, 7-6(10) victory.

Former Stanford All-american Nishesh Basavareddy, who is now working with Daniil Medvedev's former coach Gilles Cervara (see Ben Rothenberg's Substack article on his recent hire by Basavareddy), won a second consecutive match from a set down, beating George Loffhagen of Great Britain 5-7, 6-4, 6-4.

Zachary Svajda will join fellow two-time Kalamazoo champion Learner Tien in the main draw, with the 2019 and 2021 18s champion getting through qualifying for the first time at a major with a 7-6(5), 6-2 win over Kimmer Coppejans of Belgium.  (The other two Kalamazoo 18s champions in the draw are 2018's Jenson Brooksby and 2015's Frances Tiafoe).

2018 Kalamazoo 16s champion Martin Damm will playing in his first slam main draw outside the United States after the 22-year-old left-hander defeated 2022 ITF World Junior Champion Gilles Arnaud Bailly(Texas) of Belgium 7-5, 7-5.

The sole US woman to advance is veteran Sloane Stephens, who defeated Lucia Bronzetti of Italy 6-1, 7-5. Stephens, who hadn't won three matches in a row since April of 2024, had last qualified for a major in 2011, when she was 18.

Rafael Jodar of Spain, who recently announced he was not returning to Virginia for his sophomore year, qualified with a 6-3, 0-6, 6-1 win over Luca van Assche of France. Other qualifiers with collegiate backgrounds are Arthur Fery(Stanford) of Great Britain, Liam Draxl(Kentucky) of Canada and Yuliia Starodubtseva(Old Dominion) of Ukraine.

Final round qualifying results of Americans:

Michael Zheng d. Lukas Klein[28](SVK) 4-6, 6-3, 7-6(10)
Liam Draxl[20](CAN) d. Mackenzie McDonald[6] 3-6, 7-6(2), 6-2
Nishesh Basavareddy d. George Loffhagen(GBR) 5-7, 6-4, 6-4
Zachary Svajda[29] d. Kimmer Coppejans(BEL) 7-6(5), 6-2
Yibing Wu(CHN) d. Tristan Boyer 6-3, 6-2
Martin Damm d. Gilles Arnaud Bailly(BEL) 7-5, 7-5

Sloane Stephens d. Lucia Bronzetti[2](ITA) 6-1, 7-5
Guiomar Maristany Zuleta De Reales(ESP) d. Elvina Kalieva 7-5, 4-6, 6-4
Storm Hunter[WC](AUS) d. Taylor Townsend[11] 7-6(6), 6-2
Linda Fruhvirtova[20](CZE) d. Carol Lee 5-7, 6-2, 6-4
Nikola Bartunkova[16](CZE) d. Whitney Osuigwe 6-1, 6-0

The men's and women's draws were also revealed overnight, with the 38 American competitors the most since 1997, when there were 39.  

There were no matches between Americans throughout the qualifying tournament, but that unlikely occurrence will not continue in the main draw, where there are five all-USA first round matches: Zheng vs Sebsastian Korda, Tommy Paul vs Aleks Kovacevic, Learner Tien vs Marcos Giron, Iva Jovic v Katie Volynets and Sofia Kenin vs Peyton Stearns.

The Australian Open begins on Sunday, Saturday night in the US, with ten Americans in action(this information courtesy of Rothenberg):

Zachary Svajda[Q] v Yannick Hanfmann(GER)

Michael Zheng[Q] v Sebastian Korda

Jenson Brooksby v Alexander Bublik[10]

Frances Tiafoe[19] v Jason Kubler[Q](AUS)

Patrick Kypson[WC] v Francisco Comesana(ARG)

Emilio Nava v Kyrian Jacquet[WC](FRA)

Caty McNally v Himeno Sakatsume[Q](JPN)

Venus Williams[WC] v Olga Danilovic

Hailey Baptiste v Marketa Vondrousova[32](CZE)

The brief Australian swing on the ITF Junior Circuit begins Friday (tonight in US) at the J300 in Traralgon, with seven US boys and six US girls in the draws.

The US boys are Keaton Hance[3], Jack Secord[10], Gavin Goode[11], Ryan Cozad[13], Roshan Santhosh, Tanishk Konduri and Carel Ngounoue.  Yannick Alexandrescou of France is the top seed.

The US girls are Thea Frodin[7], Capucine Jauffret, Anita Tu, Melije Clarke, Carrie-Anne Hoo and Nancy Lee.

Annika Penickova withdrew earlier this week, although she is still among the acceptances for the Australian Open Junior Championships, which begin Saturday January 24. 

Alena Kovackova of the Czech Republic is the top seed.

The order of play for the first round can be found here.

I had an opportunity to speak with former USTA General Manager of Player Development Martin Blackman this morning about his new position as the Chief Executive Officer of the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park Maryland. (JTCC is a long-time sponsor of Zootennis). 

Blackman, who was the JTCC's Director of Tennis from 2004-2008, took over for the retiring Ray Benton this past fall and he told me he was excited about this opportunity to be more hands on than he was able to be in his position at the USTA.

"My former position as General Manager of Player Development, I love every day of that job as well, but I was a little removed from the action." Blackman said. "I didn't really get into the action unless I went to a junior tournament or a pro tournament. Here every day I'm a part of it. I walk the courts, in the morning, in the afternoon, at lunch. I try to get on the court a couple of times a week for practices, so getting that feeling again and also being able to talk directly to the kids and the parents in the program, that's really energized me."

JTCC has a full range of programs: for young children, for those training after school, for adult beginners, for veterans, for Special Olympians and for wheelchair and para-standing competitors in keeping with its mission of Tennis for Everyone. Yet it's the non-profit organization's High Performance program that has garnered the most attention. 

That program will have a full-circle moment with the announcement that Denis Kudla, one of the first players who trained at JTCC to embark on a professional career, is returning as a coach.

"He retired (from ATP tennis) and had a really good year with (coaching) Reilly (Opelka)," Blackman. "He has a young little baby and he wanted to have more time. We started talking back in November, and he said, yeah, I would love to come back, so we kept talking and figured out a way to make it happen."

Blackman said that its High Performance program serves as an important beacon for the JTCC.

"The way I see it, I look at it as 99/1," Blackman said. "Ninety-nine percent of our young players, juniors, we want them using tennis as a vehicle to get to a great university, where they can have a great experience and thrive, and that's the bulk of the mission."

"But when you have that one percent, like Frances(Tiafoe), and Robin(Montgomery) and Hailey(Baptiste), you kind of get both. You get that aspirational excellence at the top and you leverage that excellence to grow and add resources to the bottom. So having Frances and Denis and Hailey and Robin has helped us bring so much visibility to the program and to raise money for the program. I think it's a really good balance; if we tried to over focus on developing professional players I think we'd hurt our mission. But there's definitely room for both, and that's the goal."

"It's very important to our board that our High Performance program is the best in the world, or striving to be the best in the world," Blackman said. "That was very important to our founder, Ken Brody. So it's really building on that strong foundation."

JTCC President Vesa Ponkka, who has been at JTCC since its inception in 1999, will work alongside Blackman in this initiative to strengthen the High Performance program.

"The High Performance program had a really strong foundation," Blackman said. "So the bones and the structure was there. But strategically, and this is every CEO's prerogative, the emphasis wasn't on high performance, the way it was up until four years ago. And that's something that's very important to our board, that it's our flagship."

For more on the new JTCC High Performance leadership, see this article from their website.