Honda and Nguyen Claim Orange Bowl 16s Titles; Ngounoue and Crossley Meet for Girls 18s Title; Grade A Rematch Sunday Between Pacheco Mendez and Campana Lee; Jovic and Grant Capture Doubles Title
©Colette Lewis 2022--
Plantation Florida--
The 16s Orange Bowl singles champions were crowned Saturday at the Veltri Tennis Center, with Naoya Honda making history for Japan in the boys tournament and Alexis Nguyen adding to the American dominance of the girls event.
Honda, the No. 5 seed, defeated unseeded Matthew Forbes of the United States 6-3, 6-4 to become the first Japanese boy to claim an Orange Bowl singles title, impressing the scores of fans gathered around Court 1 with his speed, accuracy and uncanny ability to get an overhead back in play. Although the crowd was firmly in the American's corner, they had little to cheer about after Honda took control of the first set with breaks in the fourth and sixth games.
Forbes got one of the breaks back with Honda serving for the set at 5-1, primarily due to several rare unforced errors, but Honda had no trouble closing out the set in his second opportunity.
After a bathroom break, Forbes opened the second set by earning two game points on his serve, but he made unforced errors on both, while Honda kept his position on the baseline, denying Forbes any time to work the point.
With Honda serving well and Forbes continuing to make errors that hadn't been evident in his 7-5, 6-0 semifinal win over No. 7 seed Miguel Tobon of Colombia, the score was soon 4-0.
Forbes began to play better serving down 1-5, and he saved two match points with Honda serving for the match at 5-2, one with a lob winner and the second when Honda made an unforced error after a let serve. Forbes held to put the pressure back on Honda, but as he had done in the first set, he made good on his second chance, closing it out when his forehand approach drew an error from Forbes.
Forbes, who, like Honda, lost only one set in advancing to the final, didn't sense any nerves on the other side of the net late in the match.
"I don't think he got nervous at all, I just started playing better," said the 16-year-old from Raleigh, who has verbally committed to the University of North Carolina for 2024. "I wasn't nervous at the beginning, but I just wasn't playing well. I had heard he was a good player, so I wasn't surprised."
Honda, who reached the 16s quarterfinals at last week's Eddie Herr, losing to Jagger Leach, cites hard courts as his favorite surface, and he has taken to the green clay, with titles in both singles and doubles championships on it this week, but he said he is less comfortable on the red version he trains on in Europe. He plans to continue to test himself on clay early next year on the ITF Junior Circuit's South American swing.
Forbes, who trains with Calin Mateas at Hollow Rock in Durham, is not sure what his schedule will look like after some time off, but is considering traveling to the ITF J1 in Costa Rica at the end of January.
Earlier in the week, Nguyen said she was delighted to have broken what she called a curse: her inability to get past the quarterfinals of a USTA Level 1 event.
"After all these years in the quarters and now I actually win the tournament," said the 15-year-old from El Dorado Hills California, who defeated unseeded Claire Hill 6-1, 6-2 in the final. "It's really nice, I played solid the whole tournament."
Nguyen admitted that competing on the stadium court, with ballrunners and spectators was nerve-racking.
"I was really nervous," said Nguyen, who trains at the JMG Academy in Sacramento with Nick Bezzubchenko and Joe Gilbert. "It's the final of Orange Bowl. Anyone who plays it would be."
Nguyen was happy with her level of play throughout the match, and was able to identify just one game in the first set that she played without appropriate focus.
Even when down a break at 2-1 in the second set, Nguyen did not feel any sense of urgency.
"Both games were close and I feel like I could have or should have won both those games," said Nguyen, who lost just one set during the week, to Tianmei Wang in the semifinals. "I feel like I just needed to lock in a little bit more, cut down on the unforced errors, but I didn't really need to change much. I think my level was pretty good and I was pretty solid the whole time through."
Hill admitted she simply couldn't get her game going.
"She's an amazing player," Hill said. "And I felt like I never could get a rhythm going."
Hill had won a physically and mentally draining semifinal with Monika Ekstrand 0-6, 6-3, 7-6(6), and while that gave her hope for another comeback in the final, too many errors prevented it.
"I was definitely thinking that, hoping that if I stayed aggressive, it would help, but I couldn't pull it out," said the 15-year-old from Cary North Carolina, who trains with Brian DeVilliers at the Van Der Meer Academy in South Carolina and Calin Mateas in Durham. "She was super consistent, moving me side to side, and I just couldn't get any rhythm on my shots."
Nguyen, who is the fifth consecutive US girl to win the 16s title, is unsure what her next tournament will be, leaving that to her parents and coaches, while Hill is playing the USTA Winter Nationals in the 18s division late this month.
Four players with gaudy junior circuit won-loss records in the past two months will vie for the ITF Grade A titles Sunday, with No. 5 seed Clervie Ngounoue meeting unseeded Mayu Crossley of Japan for the Orange Bowl girls singles championship, while No. 1 seed Gerard Campana Lee of Korea faces No. 2 seed Rodrigo Pacheco Mendez of Mexico for the boys title.
Ngounoue defeated unseeded Iva Jovic in the all-American semifinal 6-3, 6-1 for her 11th consecutive Grade A victory. The 16-year-old, who won the JA in Merida Mexico two weeks ago, was playing her Junior Billie Jean King Cup teammate for the first time.
"We both challenged each other," said Ngounoue, who now lives in Orlando and trains with USTA National Coach Jermaine Jenkins. "It was tough both mentally and physically--I don't know about her, but definitely for me. It was tougher on the mind, playing a fellow teammate, but I was just trying to take it point by point and fight it out."
Ngounoue reached the Orange Bowl 16s final in 2019 as a 13-year-old, and reflected on all that has happened since then to prepare her for tomorrow's final.
"It's only positives right?," Ngounoue said. "You either win or you learn, and I feel the last few years I've just been setting myself up for what is to come, days like tomorrow. The last few years have just flown by; I can't even imagine I was in the final of the 16s a few years ago; so much has happened since then, but I'm glad I was able to bring myself back to a similar situation."
Crossley is also on an 11-match winning streak, having won the Eddie Herr J1 last week, which Ngounoue did not play. In Saturday's semifinal against unseeded Anya Murthy of California, Crossley recorded her fifth consecutive straight-sets victory 6-3, 6-0.
Crossley is not getting caught up in all the success, rather she described her recent victories as "just doing my job."
After an early exit at last year's Orange Bowl, Crossley has seen her game develop while competing on the ITF Junior Circuit all year.
"I feel like I'm growing up," said the 16-year-old, who trains with Jacopo Tezza at the Evert Academy in Boca Raton. "I'm just doing my tennis, and I'm winning, that's very happy to me."
Crossley remembers Ngounoue reaching the final in 2019, and recently saw her play when they were at the Junior Billie Jean King Cup in Turkey, although Japan did not face the champions from the United States.
"She set the bar for me," said Crossley, who would be the first Japanese girl to claim the 18s title at the Orange Bowl should she win Sunday. "I am very happy to play her and I will have fun tomorrow. My last match of the year."
The boys final Sunday will be a rematch of the Grade A final in Merida less than two weeks ago, where Rodrigo Pacheco Mendez of Mexico ended the 22-match winning streak of Gerard Campana Lee of Korea by a score of 6-3, 6-2.
As in that match, Campana Lee was the No. 1 seed and Pacheco was the No. 2 seed, and they set up a repeat of that final with routine victories in today's semifinals. Campana Lee defeated No. 6 seed Cooper Williams 6-3, 6-3, and Pacheco downed No. 7 seed Iliyan Radulov of Bulgaria 7-5, 6-1.
Campana Lee was determined to avoid another battle like the one he had in the semifinals with No. 11 seed Hayden Jones of Australia, which ended 6-7(7), 6-1, 6-2 and lasted nearly three hours.
"Cooper is a really good player, good serve," said the 18-year-old, who trains with Alejandro Miglio at Next Level Academy in Barcelona. "I had to play deep and keep him moving, because when he is comfortable, he's very, very dangerous."
Williams had had success moving forward in his 7-5, 2-6, 6-4 win over fellow American 17-year-old Kyle Kang, but Campana Lee was able to counter that strategy effectively.
"Today he didn't come as much to the net," said Campana Lee, who has now reached the final of the last three JA tournaments he played. "He's great at the volley, I played him twice in the doubles, and he's very good, he beat me both times. Today I was playing loose and he didn't come to the net, which I think was a little bit annoying for him, because he couldn't get there so much."
Pacheco had a tough first set with Radulov, but as he has done in the past 11 matches, he came through without dropping a set.
"I played so good today," said the 17-year-old left-hander. "The other guy was a very good player, he fight until the end, he didn't give me free points, I just went for it."
Pacheco said he is confident he can repeat his performance against Campana Lee in the Merida final.
"He's a really good player, but I beat him in final in Merida, so I am prepared to beat him again," said Pacheco, who finished in third place in the Junior Orange Bowl 14s in 2019. "But this is a new match, a different match and everything could happen, but I think I have the chances."
Pacheco believes the green clay at Veltri is faster than the clay in Mexico, and Campana Lee thinks that could be to his advantage.
"I think I am playing really well this week, really comfortable playing in the green clay," Campana Lee said. "It's going to be a tough match, but hopefully I can win this time."
Campana Lee reached the doubles final with partner Paul Inchauspe of France, but the top seeds fell to No. 4 seeds Radulov and his partner Adriano Dzhenev of Bulgaria 6-3, 2-6, 10-7.
Dzhenev was determined to help his partner recover from the sting of the semifinal loss in singles.
"Before the match, he lost the semis and I just told him, it's the last match of the year, we will fight for everything," Dzhenev said. "We started the match very good, but I think in the second set, they were just the better players, and in the third set I think we were just a bit lucky. Because it's a match tiebreak."
Dzhenev and Radulov won the Merida Grade A two weeks ago, their first title as a team, and although they lost in the first round at last week's Eddie Herr, they were expecting to do well here and reached the final without needing a third set.
They are planning to continue to build on their Grade A winning streak at the Australian Open Junior Championships next month, but are going to take the next few weeks to enjoy this title.
"It's a great feeling," Radulov said.
While the boys doubles final was in a match tiebreaker on Court 2, the girls finalists were also contesting one on Court 1, with No. 3 seeds Ranah Stoiber and Mingge Xu of Great Britain and the unseeded American team of Iva Jovic and Tyra Grant tied at 6-6.
After Grant and Jovic won the first set 6-4, Stoiber and Xu battled back to take the second set 6-2, and there was little to separate the two teams in the final set. But at 6-all, Xu gave some loud encouragement after Stoiber had hit what appeared to be a volley winner up the middle, but before Grant had had a chance to dig it out.
The chair umpire immediately called a hindrance on Xu and awarded the point to Grant and Jovic, and when Jovic held her two serves, the Americans had three match points. Xu poached to save the first, but Grant and Jovic got the next one to earn an unexpected title.
"I was there and I hit the ball, so it was the right call," Grant said of the hindrance call. "I think that point discouraged them a lot, because Mimi stopped going for her shots, and from there, it just went up for us."
The 14-year-old Grant and the 15-year-old Jovic had played together only once before in ITF Junior Circuit competition, with a first round loss at the Eddie Herr last week not indicating an Orange Bowl title in their immediate future.
"Maybe a couple of rounds, yeah," said Grant of their hopes coming into to the event. "We came with a different mindset from the Eddie Herr, to be more aggressive and everything, and we knew what to do. But winning the tournament? No."
"Yeah, I was like I think we can do better than Eddie Herr," Jovic said. "But then I saw we played the 4 seeds in the first round and was I like, nah, oh too bad."
After winning their first two matches in third-set match tiebreakers, they knew how to handle that pressure and what mindset was necessary.
"I think we did a great job to just fight and stay there," Grant said, pointing out they did not have the lead until they were awarded that point on a hindrance. "We had high energy and I think that decided it," Jovic added.
The 18s singles finals begin on Sunday with the girls singles championship at 10 a.m., followed by the boys. Live streaming is available here.
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