Blanch and Bigun Advance to Quarterfinal Meeting at Wimbledon Junior Championships; Williams Makes Three US Boys in Last Eight; Ngounoue Looks to Avenge Roehampton Loss; Top Seeds in Girls Doubles, No. 2 Boys Singles Seed Ousted

©Colette Lewis 2023--
Wimbledon--

Three American boys advanced to the quarterfinals of the Wimbledon Junior Championships, with a semifinalist from the United States guaranteed for the third consecutive slam when No. 9 seed Darwin Blanch faces unseeded Kaylan Bigun Thursday.

Bigun was the first into the final eight, on a partly cloudy and cool Wednesday at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, defeating No. 3 seed Yi Zhou of China 7-6(3), 6-4. 

There were no breaks of serve in the first set, and it was the 17-year-old Bigun who came up with the better shots on the handful of key points that decided it. Zhou made two forehand errors on the final two points of the tiebreaker, opening the door for Bigun, who expected the match to be decided by the slimmest of margins.

"The goal going into the breaker, going into the whole match in general, was to be really solid on my returns," Bigun said. "On grass, if you the first serve back with a good return, you give yourself an opportunity to break. I hit a good backhand return in the tiebreaker, he missed a forehand, and I used that momentum to get a few plus-ones."

The only break of the match came in the third game of the second set, with another unforced error on the forehand giving Bigun the lead. He never relinquished it, although every service game Bigun had from then on went to 30-all. Bigun stayed in front, winning every 30-all point, although he avoided attributing any significance to that.

"I didn't really think, oh it's was a big moment," said the left-hander from Hollywood California. "Going point by point was the goal, keep it as simple as I could. When it gets tight, you sometimes tend to overthink it, try to do something you haven't done before, but sometimes it take the same patterns over and over."

Bigun went down 15-30 serving at 5-4 in the second, but two good first serves gave him a match point and he put away a forehand to earn a first meeting with Blanch.

Blanch was also locked in a tight battle with unseeded Lorenzo Sciahbasi of Italy on an adjacent court before he navigated a couple of tricky spots for a 7-6(6), 6-3 victory. Blanch saved a set point at 4-5, 30-40, while Sciahbasi saved one at 5-6 in the tiebreaker, but the 17-year-old Italian made an unforced backhand error on the next point and Blanch's big first serve and forehand winner off the return ended it.

The second set was on serve until 2-3, when Sciahbasi asked for a medical time out, with treatment for what appeared to be a back problem. It was a lengthy delay, but Blanch said that scenario has never posed any problems for him.

"I didn't mind it," the 15-year-old left-hander said. "I obviously would have minded if I had been the one serving. Usually I cope with these things well, just keep moving, activation, just keeping warm. I was doing whatever I could so that when he was ready, I could go back and play."

Sciahbasi held serve for 3-3, but Blanch noticed that Schiahbasi wasn't moving quite as well after the medical timeout.

"There were times when I was pushing him to the backhand, especially my serve, when he would have to twist his back more, he had more pain there," Blanch said. "So I tried to serve more there, slice it to his backhand."

Although Bigun and Blanch have not played, they are friends, and spoke before the match about the possibility of meeting in the quarterfinals. 

"I'm excited, it's going to be a fun match," Blanch said. "I know he's a good player and he's capable of playing at a high level, so tomorrow I'll need to bring out the best I can."

No. 4 seed Cooper Williams, who lost to Blanch in the quarterfinals at the Roland Garros Junior Championships last month, is the third American boy in the quarterfinals. The 18-year-old rising freshman at Harvard defeated No. 16 seed Alejandro Melero Kretzer of Spain 6-4, 6-4 in a match that had very few rallies and no rhythm. 

"He serves well, he's a tall guy, and I was serving pretty well, so the games were relatively fast," Williams said. "I was just taking cuts on my return, stepping in, and it paid off once a set. Neither of us had any rhythm, so if I took a crack at a return and got it at his feet, it wasn't like he'd hit many of those, so it worked out."

The first six games of the second set were easy holds for the server, but suddenly Melero Kretzer's forehand went off at 4-4. Down 0-30 due to two unforced errors on that side, Melero Kretzer mishandled a good second serve return and Williams had three break points. A backhand return winner off another second serve gave Williams the lead, but serving it out was a bit more complicated than that. At 5-4, 30-40 Williams improvised at the net to keep the point alive, saving the break point, and Melero Kretzer missed his next two backhands to give Williams the victory.

Williams will face No. 6 seed Iliyan Radulov of Bulgaria, who beat  Nicolai Budkov Kjaer of Norway 6-3, 6-2.

"I haven't played him, but I've seen him play quite a few times," Williams said. "Definitely a solid player, so it's going to be a good match and I'm looking forward to it."

The other quarterfinal in the top half Thursday features unseeded Henry Searle of Great Britain and No. 8 seed Joao Fonseca of Brazil, last week's champion at Roehampton. In addition to Blanch and Bigun, the other quarterfinal in the bottom half will have No. 5 seed Yaroslav Demin facing No. 15 seed Tomasz Berkieta of Poland. Berkieta defeated No. 2 seed Rodrigo Pacheco Mendez of Mexico 4-6, 7-6(2), 6-4 in the day's longest boys third round match.

While the top two boys seeds are gone, the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds in the girls draw are rolling along, with top seed Alina Korneeva beating qualifier Greta Greco Lucchina of Italy 6-3, 6-2 and No. 2 seed Clervie Ngounoue defeating unseeded Rositsa Dencheva of Bulgaria 6-3, 6-1.

Korneeva said she was not aware that she had a 15-match winning streak at junior slams, having never lost since making her debut in Australia in January and following it with the Roland Garros title last month.

The 16-year-old did admit to knowing that no girl has ever won the first three junior slams, and she has now reached the same stage at Wimbledon as the last girl to win the first two junior slams in a calendar year, Magdalena Maleeva in 1990.

Korneeva did not enter Roehampton, explaining that she didn't need the points, but spent five days there practicing on the surface to prepare for her quest for a third straight title.

After three matches this week, she is not certain how she feels about grass as a surface for her game.

"Let's see," she joked. "Can I say it after the tournament? Sometimes it's really difficult, because if the ball bounces on the line, it's really difficult to play, and if my opponent, like today, did slices, it's really difficult, but I need to be ready for this."

No. 8 seed Ena Koike of Japan will be looking to stop Korneeva in Thursday's quarterfinals, after she defeated wild card Taylah Preston of Australia 6-4, 6-3.

Ngounoue did play Roehampton last week, losing in the quarterfinals to Sayaka Ishii of Japan, her opponent again Thursday after Ishii eliminated 14-year-old Hannah Klugman 6-4, 6-4

"She plays so well on grass," said Ngounoue, who dropped a 6-3, 3-6, 6-4 decision to the 17-year-old. "In general, she's a really good player and in general, grass fits her. We had a long, three-set match that I think brought out the best of both of us. We played an insane match and she came out on top in the end. She really deserved it."

In the other bottom half quarterfinal, No. 5 seed and Roehampton champion Renata Jamrichova of Slovakia will play 14-year-old British wild card Mika Stojsavljevic. In the second quarterfinal in the top half, unseeded Ranah Stoiber of Great Britain will play unseeded Nikola Bartunkova of the Czech Republic.

The top seeds in girls doubles, Lucciana Perez Alarcon of Peru and Kaitlin Quevedo of the United States, won their first round match that was postponed from Tuesday, but fell in the second round to Americans Alexia Harmon and Valeria Ray 6-2, 6-2.

The top seeds in boys doubles, Demin and Williams, saved two match points in the deciding match tiebreaker to beat Carlo Caniato and Filippo Romano of Italy 2-6, 6-1, 13-11.

Williams, who won the Australian Open boys doubles with Learner Tien, and Demin, who won the Roland Garros boys doubles title with Pacheco Mendez, decided to team up for the third junior slam, and needed all of that experience to get past the Italians. 

Williams hit a pair of volley winners to save match points at 9-10 and 10-11, then came up with a perfectly executed topspin lob winner to convert their second match point.

Their quarterfinal opponents are Blanch and Roy Horovitz, the No. 7 seeds, who defeated wild cards Freddy Blaydes and Benjamin Gusic Wan of Great Britain 6-2, 6-4. 

The other US girls team in the quarterfinals is Tatum Evans and Alanis Hamilton, who defeated No. 6 seeds Wakana Sonobe of Japan and Tereza Valentova of the Czech Republic 6-2, 4-6, 10-7.

The last of the Americans in men and women's singles at Wimbledon bowed out today, with Madison Keys[25] losing to Aryna Sabalenka[2] 6-2, 6-4 and Chris Eubanks falling to Daniil Medvedev[3] 6-4, 1-6, 4-6, 7-6(4), 6-1. Although he lost in the quarterfinals, Eubanks set a new Wimbledon record, according to the IBM Stat of the Day:

Chris Eubanks breaks the record for most winners hit in a Wimbledon Championship with 321. The previous record was Andre Agassi with 317 in 1992. (Our records start from 1977).

Caroline Dolehide and her partner Shuai Zhang of China are through to the women's doubles semifinals, but they do not play until Friday.