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Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Tien, Zheng and Braswell Defeat Seeds to Advance to Third Round at Milan Grade A; Three Americans Reach Final Round of Qualifying at Roland Garros; Five Teens Advance to Second Round at Pelham $60K; Men's D-I Team Quarterfinals on Tap Thursday in Champaign

The round of 16 is set for the ITF Grade A Trofeo Bonfiglio in Milan, with five boys from the United States through on the Italian red clay.

Sixteen-year-old Learner Tien, playing in Europe for the first time since Bolton/Les Petits As in 2019, pulled off the biggest upset of the day, defeating No. 3 seed and future Georgia Bulldog Ignacio Buse of Chile 6-3, 6-7(5), 6-3. Tien will face unseeded Vilius Gaubas of Lithuania in Thursday's third round. Future Florida Gator Jonah Braswell defeated No. 13 seed Yaroslav Demin of Russia 6-4, 6-2 to advance in a Grade A for the first time, and will play top seed and Orange Bowl champion Daniel Vallejo of Paraguay on Thursday. Michael Zheng won a tough match over No. 12 seed Gilles Arnaud Bailly, younger brother of University of Texas star Pierre-Yves Bailly, 4-6, 7-6(2), 6-4. Zheng's opponent in the third round is No. 8 seed Martin Landaluce of Spain.

The only US boy seeded, No. 10 Nishesh Basavareddy, defeated Lennon Roark of Japan 6-1, 6-3 and will face No. 7 seed Bor Artnak of Slovenia in Thursday's third round.  Ethan Quinn, who won his second round match Tuesday, will play No. 5 seed Dino Prizmic of Croatia, who beat qualifier Alexander Razeghi 6-2, 6-1. 

No. 5 seed Liv Hovde is the only US girl remaining, after qualifier Iva Jovic lost to No. 10 seed Hanne Vandewinkel of Belgium 6-0, 6-4. 

Tommy Hemp watched the victory by No. 2 seed Diana Schnaider of Russia today and gives his thoughts on her game in this TennisUnderWorld post.

Hovde and Qavia Lopez, the No. 1 seeds, have advanced to the doubles quarterfinals, as have Quinn and Nicholas Godsick and Basavareddy and Aidan Kim. 

Three Americans have advanced to the final round of qualifying at Roland Garros, with Hailey Baptiste, Christina McHale and Bjorn Fratangelo winning their second round matches today. Baptiste, the No. 17 seed, defeated Julia Grabher of Austria 1-6, 6-3, 6-2 and will face 2021 Wimbledon girls finalist Nastasja Schunk of Germany for a spot in the main draw. McHale defeated Carolina Alves of Brazil 7-6(4), 6-2 today and will play Valentini Grammatikopoulou of Greece in the final round. Those matches are Friday.

Fratangelo, the 2011 boys champion at Roland Garros, defeated Juan Pablo Ficovich of Argentina 6-1, 6-2 and will play Nino Serdarusic in the final round of qualifying, also on Friday.

Former collegians into the final round of qualifying are Nuno Borges[20](Mississippi State) of Portugal, Borna Gojo(Wake Forest) of Croatia, Alexander Ritschard(Virginia) of Switzerland and Fernanda Contreras(Vanderbilt) of Mexico.

Two young French wild cards have made the final round of qualifying: 18-year-old Sean Cuenin, who was one of the four French semifinalists in the boys tournament last year, and 18-year-old Oceane Babel, who took out No. 8 seed Ekaterine Gorgodze of Georgia 1-6, 6-4, 6-4 today. She will face 19-year-old Oksana Selekhmeteva of Russia, who reached the semifinals of the girls singles at Roland Garros last year. 

Seventeen-year-old Linda Noskova of the Czech Republic, who won the girls Roland Garros title last year, is also through to the final round of qualifying.

Draws can be found here.

Five teenagers advanced to the second round of the $60,000 USTA Women's Pro Circuit tournament in Pelham Alabama today: No. 2 seed Elvina Kalieva defeated Jasmin Jebawy of Germany 6-2, 6-0; No. 8 seed Ashlyn Krueger defeated wild card Alexa Graham 6-1, 6-4; No. 7 seed Katrina Scott beat qualifier Ariana Arsenault(Auburn) of Canada 6-2, 6-1 and South Carolina recruit McKenna Schaefbauer beat fellow wild card Jenna Thompson(Clemson) 6-2, 3-6, 6-2. 19-year-old Jana Kolodynska of Belarus is the only international teen of that group. The two-time Orange Bowl finalist defeated qualifier Joelle Kissell(NC State) 6-3, 6-2.

At the $25,000 USTA Women's Pro Circuit tournament in Naples Florida, 18-year-old Sonya Macavei defeated fellow wild card Kelly Marie Richter of Germany 6-2, 6-2; other teens advancing are Hina Inoue, Gabriella Price and Alexa Blokhina, who won her first round match yesterday.

The NCAA Division I men's quarterfinals get underway Thursday afternoon in Champaign Illinois, with No. 1 seed TCU versus No. 8 Kentucky and No. 4 seed Ohio State versus No. 5 seed Michigan scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. EDT. 

The late matches, scheduled for 8 p.m. EDT, feature No. 3 seed Baylor versus No. 6 seed Tennessee and No. 2 seed Florida versus No. 7 seed Virginia.

See the Illinois tournament website for links to the live scoring and live streaming, which will be delivered via the TennisONE app. Commentary by Mike Cation and Alex Gruskin will begin with Saturday's semifinals.

1 comments:

College Coach "Retirements" said...

I'm very skeptical that most of these recent college coach "retirement" announcements were actual voluntary retirements. If you review the conference records of Michigan State, Washington, Arkansas and LSU you will see that all of them finished this past season extremely low in their conference which was becoming very typical of those teams lately. MSU finished second to last in the Big 10, Washington finished second to last in the Pac 12, and Arkansas finished 3rd to last in the SEC.

It has been a common tradition in college coaching to call a firing a "retirement" but all you need to do is take a look at the team's performance in the season immediately before the announcement to figure out what's really going on. It's a "polite" thing to do, but it doesn't really fool anyone.