Four American Collegians Advance to Dominican Republic $15K Semifinals; 18s Qualifying Begins Saturday at Orange Bowl; Redlicki Wins UTR $10K in Florida

After rain disrupted second round action Thursday at the ITF World Tennis Tour's $15,000 event in the Dominican Republic, the tournament got back on schedule, at least as far as singles is concerned, today, with four Americans, all of whom played college tennis, reaching Saturday's semifinals.

Top seed Nick Chappell, the former TCU star, defeated two qualifiers today, and will face unseeded Oliver Crawford for a place in the final. Crawford, who announced he would not return to the University of Florida for his senior year shortly after the shutdown, defeated 18-year-old qualifier Zane Khan 6-3, 6-2 in the quarterfinals. Khan had defeated No. 6 seed Nick Hardt of the Dominican Republic by that same score earlier in the day.  

No. 2 seed Alex Rybakov, an All-American at TCU who completed his eligibility last year, took out No. 5 seed Ricardo Rodriguez of Venezuela 6-1, 6-2 in the quarterfinals. He will play unseeded Keegan Smith, a senior at UCLA and the 2019 NCAA doubles champion, who defeated No. 4 seed Jordi Arconada(Texas A&M) in the second round and eliminated qualifier Juan Carlos Aguilar of Canada, a junior at Texas A&M, 6-2, 6-4 in the quarterfinals.  

The first two rounds of the Orange Bowl 16s qualifying are in the books, with both top seeds eliminated. Kate Kim of the USA defeated No. 1 qualifying seed Madison Smith in the first round 6-2, 6-4 and advanced to Saturday's final round of qualifying with a 6-2, 6-2 second round win over Claire An. There were no byes in the girls 16s qualifying. In the boys 16s qualifying, top seed Armando Sotelo of Mexico received a first round bye, but he lost in the second round 6-1, 6-4 to Patrick Toman of the United States.  I had thought, given the negative test requirement, that there might be quite a few walkovers today, given that the turnaround time for test results can vary, but there were only five in 16s qualifying; three were in the boys draw; both of the girls walkovers were surprisingly in the second round.

The 18s qualifying begins on Saturday, and as was the case today for the 16s, two rounds will be played. Neither of the draws filled completely, with 11 byes for the boys and 5 byes for the girls. The top seed in girls 18s qualifying is Kailey Evans; the boys 18s No. 1 qualifying seed is Alvaro Guillen Meza of Ecuador. Both are ranked in the ITF Top 200.

Live scoring is now up and running, and can be found here. The draws are here, and the order of play is here. The list of players who moved into the main draw from qualifying is here.

Quite a few Orange Bowl participants took part this week in another of the $10,000 UTR tournaments in South Florida, but more seasoned veterans picked up the titles, Former Arkansas star Michael Redlicki, the No. 3 seed, defeated No. 4 seed Maximiliano Estevez of Argentina 6-1, 6-3 in the men's final. Katarzyna Piter of Poland won the women's tournament, with Paula Kania-Chodun of Poland withdrawing before the final. The winners received $1500, with the finalists getting $750.