Top Two Girls Seeds Fall in ITF J300 Tucson Quarterfinals, Azam Ousts Second Seed Goode to Reach Semifinals; Blanch Awarded Miami Open Wild Card, Brantmeier, Stoiana, Frodin and Ekstrand Receive Qualifying Wild Cards

©Colette Lewis 2026--
Tucson AZ--

The desert heat and motivated opponents were too much for three of the top seeds Thursday in the quarterfinals of the ITF J300 at the Tucson Racquet and Fitness Club. Girls top seed Melije Clarke lost to No. 8 seed Capucine Jauffret 6-4, 0-6, 6-3; No. 2 seed Hollie Smart of Great Britain was beaten 6-0, 6-2 by unseeded Camille Allegre, and boys No. 2 seed Gavin Goode fell to No. 7 seed Safir Azam 2-6, 6-1, 6-4.

Allegre got off the court before the temperatures soared into the upper 80s in the early afternoon, taking the first set without much resistance from Smart. Smart's lengthy bathroom break, partly due to the distance from the courts to the facility, didn't initially provide any shift in momentum, with Allegre building a 3-0 lead, but Smart did hold and break, winning nine points in a row before Allegre shut the door with a hold for 4-2 and another break.

"After 3-0 I was playing a little tight," said Allegre, a 16-year-old from Orange County California. "I was thinking, ok, I'm going to win this. But I had to refocus, and I knew I had to get that game(at 4-2)."

Allegre, who at 383 in the ITF junior rankings is more than 300 spots behind No. 61 Smart, admitted she was nervous closing out the match, but used a lesson learned in a close loss last year.

"I knew I had to stay present," said Allegre, who is coached by her father Vince, a former All-American at UCLA. "Because last year I played a match against a really good player and I was up a set, lost the second set in a tiebreaker, then went up 4-1 in the third set. And then I lost focus, I was looking too far ahead. From that match I learned I had to stay in the present. It was a tough loss but I learned something from it."

Allegre also gained confidence from her three-set win over Carlota Moreno in the third round. Moreno, No. 1 in the USTA 18s rankings, reached the semifinals of a W15 in Florida last month and was a semifinalist at last week's J200 in Las Vegas.

"I knew if I could beat her, I could beat anyone," said Allegre, who had also taken out No. 10 seed Adla Lopez in the second round. 

Next for Allegre is unseeded Emery Combs, who is celebrating her first week as a 15-year-old by advancing to a J300 semifinal for the first time.

Combs ended the run of qualifier Armira Kockinis 6-3, 6-4, her fourth consecutive straight-sets victory.

Allison Wang is the third unseeded girl advancing to her first J300 semifinal this week, with the 15-year-old from San Jose beating No. 4 seed Lani Chang 6-2, 6-1. Wang, who lost in the second round at the Las Vegas J200 last week, is finding the conditions in Tucson much more to her liking, dropping only nine games in her four victories.

Wang's next test is Jauffret, who kept her nerve late in the match to avenge her loss to Clarke at the 2025 J300 in Indian Wells, the tournament that has now moved here.

Jauffret, who began her coaching partnership with Dimitry Bigun, father of former top juniors Kaylan and Meecah, at that tournament, described her win today as a "full circle moment."

"It's kind of ironic that I got my revenge today, it's crazy actually," said the 18-year-old from Delaware, who will begin her collegiate career at the University of Florida this fall. 

Jauffret hasn't had many wins on the ITF Junior Circuit the past several months, with her ranking dropping from 47 to 100, so this result is especially gratifying.

"I definitely have been struggling a bit recently," Jauffret said. "So this one means a lot to me. I've been working super, super hard, so I'm really happy with this one."

Jauffret cited a loss of energy for her performance in the second set, but she got a break in the first game of the third set and managed to hold it throughout the set, breaking Clarke again to avoid having to serve it out.

Jauffret considers her return one of the strengths of her game, which counteracted the big first serve that often gives Clarke an edge  in tight spots.

"We've been working on my return a lot, and it's one of the parts of my game that I love," Jauffret said. "So I think I did a good job of neutralizing her first serve and putting so much pressure on her second serve to make her as uncomfortable as possible."

While Jauffret's win was the only girls quarterfinal to go the distance, two of the boys matches went to three sets, and that was just fine with Azam, who is now three-for-three this week in that situation.

"I love the third setters," said the 16-year-old from Washington state. "I haven't been able to find my rhythm in the first set, at all, throughout this tournament. I've played different kinds of players in every match, so the first set, like Novak, I just figure out the player, come back in the second, use that momentum into the third. That's been my strategy here."

Azam said he's feeling physically able to sustain these marathons, which gave him an edge over Goode, who began to cramp in the third set.

"In the third set, his left arm was fully cramped up," Azam said. "He could not even bend it, and I took full advantage of that. I just went high heavy, to that side, and he wasn't able to do much."

Azam will face No. 5 seed Ryan Cozad, who now has a nine-match winning streak after claiming the Las Vegas J200 title last week. Cozad eliminated the last non-American in the field, beating No. 4 seed Xavier Massotte of Canada 5-7, 6-3, 6-2. Cozad and Azam have not played before, and Azam is eager to go the distance again in the second ITF J300 semifinal of his career on Friday.

"I think it's going to be a good match for sure," said Azam, who practices with Cozad when they are training at the USTA's campus in Orlando. "Hopefully another third set; I have a one-hundred percent win rate in third sets."

The top half semifinal will feature top seed Andy Johnson, who beat No. 12 seed Cooper Kose of Australia 7-6(3), 6-3, and No. 10 seed Roshan Santhosh, who ended the run of unseeded Erik Schinnerer 7-6(6), 6-0.

Johnson squandered a 5-2, 40-15 lead in the first set, lost four straight games, but broke the powerful Kose at love to force the tiebreaker. Johnson then fell behind 3-1 in the second set, but won the last five games to secure the win.

Santhosh and Johnson have not played on the ITF Junior Circuit, although Santhosh does have a win over fellow Southern Californian Johnson that dates back to the 14s in 2022.

The semifinals are set in doubles, with boys top seeds Cozad and Goode advancing to a meeting with No. 4 seeds Santhos and Massotte, and No. 2 seeds Tanishk Konduri and Marcel Latak facing No. 6 seeds Kose and Jerrid Gaines Jr. 

Girls top seeds Jauffret and Smart advanced to the girls doubles semifinals, where they will play No. 8 seeds Kennedy Drenser-Hagmann and Karlin Schock. The unseeded team of Kockinis and Kaya Baker will face No. 6 seeds Combs and Olivia Traynor in the bottom half semifinal.

The majority of the wild cards for next week's Miami Open Masters 1000 were announced today, with Darwin Blanch (who lost to Billy Harris of Great Britain today 3-6, 7-6(5), 7-6(6), 16-year-old Moise Kouame of France, Martin Damm, Wu Yibing of China and Rei Sakamoto of Japan receiving main draw wild cards.

Women's main draw wild cards were awarded to Venus Williams, Sloane Stephens, Taylor Townsend, Ashlyn Krueger, 17-year-old Emerson Jones of Australia, 18-year-old Lilli Tagger of Austria, Jennifer Brady(UCLA) and Dasha Vidmanova(Georgia) of Czechia. 

Women's qualifying wild cards were given to Reese Brantmeier(North Carolina), Mary Stoiana(Texas A&M), 17-year-old Thea Frodin, 18-year-old Monika Ekstrand(Stanford), Erika Andreeva of Russia and Ayla Aksu of Turkey.  Men's qualifying wild cards so far are Martin Landaluce of Spain, 17-year-old Luis Guto Miguel of Brazil, 18-year-old Manas Dhamne of India and and 18-year-old Diego Dedura-Palomero of Germany. 

The wild card release from the Miami Open can be found here. Qualifying begins Sunday.