17 Americans Accepted into Wimbledon Junior Championships; Rain Disrupts French Open; D-I Women's ITA Kickoff Draft Complete; NCAA Champions Claim Top Spots in D-III Final Rankings

With rain in Paris pushing the singles round of 16 matches at the French Open junior championships into Thursday, it's the perfect opportunity to look at the next junior slam.

The acceptances for The Junior Championships, which is the official name of the Wimbledon 18 and under event, are out, with the tournament scheduled to run from July 6-14th.  Nine US boys and eight US girls were accepted into the main draw, and has been the case with junior slams this year, the ranking cutoff for the boys draw is much tougher than the girls.

The American boys in the main draw are: Brandon Nakashima, Emilio Nava, Martin Damm, Zane Khan, Eliot Spizzirri, Cannon Kingsley, Toby Kodat, Tyler Zink and Govind Nanda. As was the case at the French Open, Nanda received main draw entry based on his ATP ranking, which is currently 601.  Youcef Rihane of Algeria, ranked 56, got in because he was the top-ranked player from Africa. Otherwise, the cutoff for entry for boys was 48, which is comparable to this year's French Open boys cutoff, which was 49 initially.

Dali Blanch and Will Grant are the two US boys currently in qualifying.

The American girls in the main draw are: Hurricane Tyra Black, Alexa Noel, Emma Navarro, Elli Mandlik, Lea Ma, Savannah Broadus, Abigail Forbes and Robin Montgomery. There were no girls receiving special entries, with the ranking cutoff for the girls 60.

Chloe Beck, Charlotte Chavatipon and Charlotte Owensby received entry into qualifying, with Katrina Scott and Emma Jackson the next two into qualifying.

Notably missing from the entries is Lorenzo Musetti of Italy, who won the boys Australian Open and, as the top seed, has reached the round of 16 this week at the French Open. It would be a shame if he were going for the junior grand slam not to play at Wimbledon, but I suppose if he does win four more matches in Paris, a wild card is not out of the question.  Eight of the ITF Top 10 boys are entered, with defending champion Chun-Hsin Tseng of Taiwan and Musetti the exceptions.

Canadian Leylah Fernandez of Canada, the top seed in the Roland Garros girls draw this week, will not be playing Wimbledon, with only four of the current ITF girls Top 10 entered. No. 1 Clara Tauson of Denmark is in the field, with Diane Parry[8] of France, Maria Osorio Serrano[9] of Colombia and Qinwen Zheng[10] of China the other three.

All four American juniors still in the singles draws at Roland Garros had their matches disrupted Wednesday, with Emma Navarro the only one with a clear advantage when play was washed out for the day. The eighth-seeded Navarro leads No. 9 seed Kamilla Bartone of Latvia 6-3, 3-2, while Toby Kodat, Martin Damm and Brandon Nakashima are all on serve late in the first set of their third round matches.  With the forecast for Friday not good, the quarterfinals matches in singles are also on the Thursday schedule.

Neither of the two women's quarterfinals on today's schedule started, so Madison Keys and Amanda Anisimova will take the court at 6 a.m. Eastern Thursday for their matches.

The Division I women's Kickoff Weekend draft was held today to fill the regional spots for the 2020 ITA Team Indoor championships. As is usually the case, there isn't much demand to travel to the top-ranked teams, and this year, the best ranking electing to go to a top four host is No. 36 Washington State, which will be going to No. 1 Stanford. No. 13 Kansas's host site was the first to fill up, with No. 18 Cal, No. 21 Virginia and No. 22 Tennessee opting for Lawrence this January. Illinois is hosting the Team Indoor next year and received an automatic bye into the final 16.  See the SLAM Tennis site for the complete draws and the draft order.  The men's Kickoff Weekend draft is Thursday.

The final ITA Division III rankings have been released, and unlike the Division I rankings, all the NCAA champions finished ranked No. 1-- singles, doubles, and team. Click on the headers to go to the full list of rankings. For a photo gallery of all the NCAA D-III singles quarterfinalists, go to the Tennis Recruiting Network.

Women’s Division III Top 10 Team, June 4 2019:
(Previous rankings in parentheses)
1. Wesleyan (4)
2. Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (2)
3. Emory (1)
4. Middlebury (3)
5. Pomona-Pitzer (5)
6. Amherst (6)
7. Carnegie Mellon (11)
8. Chicago (12)
9. MIT (19)
10. Brandeis (8)

Women’s Division III Top 10 singles, June 4, 2019
1. Ysabel Gonzalez-Rico, Emory
2. Catherine Allen, CMS
3. Lauren O’Malley, John Carroll
4. Danna Taylor, Carnegie Mellon
5. Victoria Yu, Wesleyan
6. Heather Boehm, Middlebury
7. Venia Yeung, Wesleyan
8. Jacqueline Bukzin, Amherst
9. Caroline Casper, Pomona-Pitzer
10. Leah Bush, Williams

Women’s Division III Top 5 doubles, June 4, 2019
1. Caroline Cox and Catherine Allen, CMS
2. Nicole Tan and Sarah Bahsoun, CMS
3. Heather Boehm and Annmartin Skelly, Middlebury
4. Ysabel Gonzalez-Rico and Defne Olcay, Emory
5. Victoria Yu and Kristina Yu, Wesleyan

Men’s Division III Top 10 Team, June 4 2019:
(Previous rankings in parentheses)
1. Emory (3)
2. Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (1)
3. Middlebury (6)
4. Chicago (2)
5. Amherst (4)
6. Wesleyan (5)
7. Bowdoin (8)
8. Brandeis (10)
9. Washington-St. Louis (7)
10. Williams

Men’s Division III Top 10 singles, June 4, 2019
1. Jonathan Jemison, Emory
2. Leo Vithoontien, Carleton
3. Grant Urken, Bowdoin
4. Nikolai Parodi, CMS
5. Jack Katzman, CMS
6. Ethan Hillis, Washington-St. Louis
7. Lubomir Cuba, Middlebury
8. Sean Wei, Amherst
9. Boris Sorkin, Tufts
10. Varun Shanker, Cal Tech

Men’s Division III Top 5 doubles, June 4, 2019
1. Yangeng Jiang and Grant Urken, Bowdoin
2. Noah Lilienthal and Adrian Roji, Wesleyan
3. Ninan Kumar and Erik Kerrigan, Chicago
4. Julian Gordy and Nikolai Parodi, CMS
5. Jordan Pitts and Wilson Lambeth, Trinity(Texas)