Norrie Captures Tiburon Challenger Title; Schneider and Vickery Claim USTA Pro Circuit Titles; Pre-qualifying Complete at ITA All-American Championships

Cameron Norrie of Great Britain has left TCU after his junior year this spring, and just four months after that departure, the 22-year-old left-hander has captured two ATP Challenger titles. The second of those came today, at the $100,000 tournament in Tiburon California, where the No. 8 seed defeated No. 2 seed Tennys Sandgren 6-2, 6-3.  Norrie, who won the $75,000 Binghamton Challenger in July, will see his ATP ranking, 243 when he left school, rise to around 135 with this title.

The doubles title went to the wild card pair of Andre Goransson of Sweden and Florian Lakat of France, who graduated from Cal earlier this year. They defeated the top-seeded team of Marcelo Arevalo of El Salvador(Tulsa) and Miguel Reyes-Varela of Mexico(Texas) 6-4, 6-4 in the final. Mike Cation, who does the commentary on the USTA's live stream, said the Cal pair saved 22 consecutive break points, going all the way back to their first round match on Monday.

Finalist Ryan Shane and champion Ronnie Schneider (photo courtesy Los Cab)

Ronnie Schneider won his first pro title today at the $15,000 Futures in Fountain Valley California.  The unseeded 23-year-old, who completed an outstanding career at North Carolina this spring, defeated 2015 NCAA champion Ryan Shane, the No. 5 seed, 5-7, 6-2, 7-6(1).  The recap from Joel Beers, tournament press aide:

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, CA., OCT. 1 2017—It was a fine two weeks in sunny Southern California for Ronnie Schneider, a 23-year-old Indiana native and recent graduate of the University of North Carolina: he won two USTA Men’s Futures doubles championships and claimed his first singles championship Sunday by defeating Ryan Shane in the $15,000 Los Cab USTA Men’s Futures.

            “It’s been a great few weeks in California,” said Schneider, who won the doubles championship last week with Shane as a partner in Laguna Niguel, and who won this week alongside Elliott Orkin.

            But it wasn’t easy. After exploding to a 5-1 lead in the first set and with the serve, the unseeded Schneider dropped six straight games to lose the first set, 7-5. He recovered in the second set, winning 6-2, and then outlasted the fourth-seeded Shane in the third set, which he won in a tiebreaker, 7-6(7-1).

            "He’s a great player with a really strong game and I really needed to regroup after the first set,” Schneider said. “I think I let off the gas a little bit, and he pinned me. I just told myself to play the next six games like the first, and I straightened it out.”

            “I was just happy to get in the finals,” said Shane, who the NCAA singles championship for the University of Virginia in 2015 and who had won nine straight matches, including the finals championship in Laguna Niguel last week. “I think he saw I was hurting a little bit in the second set (Shane said he has felt pain in his left knee the last few days) …I fought with the best I could do out there today, but he played really well, and it wasn’t enough.”

With the win, Schneider earned $2,160 and 27 ATP ranking points. He
entered the tournament ranked 887 in the world. Shane, who entered ranked 549, and who won the event two years ago when it was in Costa Mesa, earned $1,272 and 15 ATP points.
 
Twenty-two-year-old Sachia Vickery won the biggest title of her pro career today at the $60,000 Women's USTA Pro Circuit tournament in Templeton California. No. 4 seed Vickery, who won two $25,000 titles in 2015, defeated No. 8 seed Jamie Loeb 6-1, 6-2 despite getting less than 50 percent of her first serves in.  Vickery, who has yet to crack the WTA Top 100, will move to around 115 with this title.

At the $15,000 USTA Women's Pro Circuit tournament in Charleston South Carolina, Washington State freshman Michaela Bayerlova of the Czech Republic won her second career ITF Women's Circuit final, with the No. 5 seed taking out top seed Montserrat Gonzalez of Paraguay 2-6, 6-3, 6-3 in today's final.  The 18-year-old was No. 3 on the ITA's preseason freshman/newcomers ranking list, but she is not participating in the ITA All-American tournament in California this week.  For more on the match, see this article from The Post and Courier.

Aleksandra Wozniak of Canada won the $25,000 USTA Women's Pro Circuit tournament in Stillwater Oklahoma, with the No. 8 seed beating No. 2 seed and 2014 US Open girls champion Marie Bouzkova of the Czech Republic 7-5, 6-4 in today's final.

The pre-qualifying is complete at the ITA Men's All-American Championships in Tulsa, with 16 men advancing to the qualifying, which begins on Monday.  Tulane is the only school with more than one player successfully navigating the 256-draw.  The qualifying draw has not been posted yet, but will be available at the ITA's tournament page.

I've seen a few twitter references to results of the final round of qualifying for the All-American Championships for women in Pacific Palisades, with top freshmen Kelly Chen and Alexandra Sanford advancing to the qualifying, but the complete results aren't posted yet.  The qualifying begins on Tuesday for the women.  The ITA women's tournament page is here.  Bobby Knight is also providing coverage of the tournament at College Tennis Today.