Junior Orange Bowl Videos; Kingsley, Kodat Advance to Australian Open Juniors Round of 16; UTR Announces Partnership with Tennis Australia and Djokovic
The last of the videos from last month's major junior events in Florida are below, with separate videos of the Junior Orange Bowl boys 12s finalists and one video each for the girls 12s, girls 14s and boys 14s. For other videos from the Orange Bowl and the Eddie Herr, see the tenniskalamazoo channel on YouTube.
The Australian Open is well into its second week now, with three Americans advancing to the quarterfinals after Serena Williams beat WTA No. 1 Simona Halep Monday. Danielle Collins and Frances Tiafoe will attempt to earn spots in the semifinals Tuesday (tonight in the US), with Tiafoe certainly having the tougher road.
Monday’s fourth round matches:
Serena Williams[16] d. Simona Halep[1](ROU) 6-1, 4-6, 6-4
Elina Svitolina[6](UKR) d. Madison Keys[17] 6-2, 1-6, 6-1
Tuesday’s Round of 16 matches
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova(RUS) v Danielle Collins
Frances Tiafoe v Rafael Nadal[2](ESP)
In the second round of the Australian Open Junior championships, the first Top 8 seed lost on Monday, with Eddie Herr champion and No. 2 seed Qinwen Wang of China losing to Anastasia Tikhonova of Russia 7-5, 6-3. No. 8 girls seed Sohyun Park of Korea also lost, falling to Manon Leonard of France 6-4, 6-3. In the boys draw, No. 9 seed Cannon Kingsley defeated Wojciech Marek of Poland 6-1, 6-2 and unseeded Toby Kodat beat No. 14 seed Harold Mayot of France in a thriller 6-2, 6-7(5), 7-6(10-7). No. 16 seed Eliot Spizzirri lost for the second time in two months to Lodewijk Weststrate of the Netherlands. Westrate beat Spizzirri at the Orange Bowl 6-4, 7-6(4) and 7-5, 6-4 Monday in Melbourne. Americans in Tuesday's second round matches are Lea Ma[6], Emma Navarro, Emilio Nava[13] and Zane Khan.
In doubles, No. 4 seeds Nava and Kingsley advanced to the second round, as did No. 8 seeds Navarro and Chloe Beck. Spizzirri, who is playing with Lilian Marmousez of France, and Khan, who is playing with Liam Draxl of Canada, also advanced to the second round Monday. Spizzirri and Marmousez will face Nava and Kingsley Tuesday. No. 7 seeds Tristan Boyer and Tyler Zink are also into Tuesday's second round in doubles.
The new ITF junior rankings out today reflect the great performances at last week's Grade 1s for the two 2018 Kalamazoo 16s finalists. Champion Martin Damm, who lost in the Coffee Bowl final, moved into the Top 100 for the first time, while Khan, who lost in the Traralgon final, moved into the Top 20 for the first time, with his current ranking 16. Although Coffee Bowl champion Abigail Forbes moved up 313 spots in the rankings, she is still outside the Top 100, at 108.
UTR announced Saturday that they had established "strategic partnerships" with Tennis Australia and Novak Djokovic. UTR has signed an impressive list of partners and investors in the past year and they are now establishing themselves as serious power broker in the tennis industry. Tennis may not need another one of those, but if there is a chance they can unite the sport, rather than fragment it, it's a positive development. I've been hearing that the ITF, rather than adopt the UTR, is looking at developing a similar system themselves, which strikes me as silly and dangerous. The ITF could see their circuit decline, and as noted in my article on the World Tennis Tour earlier this month, ignoring the college route, while Oracle continues to support that pathway, could backfire.
5 comments:
Rafael Nadal takes out the young American, Frances Tiafoe,in straight sets in the quarter finals last night Down Under, 3,4,2.
Danielle Collins, 2 time NCAA Champion from University of Virginia, advances to the Semi Finals of the Aussie Open, defeating
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, 2-5,7-5,6-1. Next up for the American is Petra Kvitova.
UTR is a horror show in junior tennis. Kids know they get more ranking credits for every game they win so now cheat on pretty much every point. Scores have gone from 6-4,6-3 with some cheating to 6-0,6-1 with much more cheating. UTR is the worse thing to happen to junior tennis ever. It has increased the cheating, poor sportsmanship, and crazed parents a ton over the last 2 years. A 30 year tenure USTA official decided to quit the sport as he said its gotten so terrible.
I highly doubt UTR had forced cheating on every point. Nothing of the kind is occurring at the national level.
Of course at the national level there is more attention, spectators, chair officials for the finals, etc. Where UTR is causing cheating on almost every point is in South Florida, the most competitive junior tournament scene.
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