My last ITF junior circuit tournament until the Eddie Herr usually is played in October, but this year's ITF J300 Pan American Closed moved to September this year, which didn't provide much recovery time for those of us who were at the US Open this year. My recap of the first ITF J300 titles for Maya Joint and Alex Frusina in Houston is available today at the Tennis Recruiting Network; if you weren't able to follow my in-depth daily coverage, it should serve as an overview of the event, played for the first time at the Giammalva Racquet Club.
The club was very nice, with 20 courts and abundant shade, which was welcome, given the mid-90s temperatures. But it did not offer viewing above and behind the courts, as College Park and Kalamazoo have, so my videos of the finals are of the individual players, from not-ideal side angles. The videos of finalists Tyra Grant and Alex Razeghi can be found my clicking on their names.
You may notice that Tennis Recruiting Network is now adding a player's World Tennis Number when he or she is mentioned in an article; the ITA, although not using the WTN for seeding, is now posting a player's WTN on the draw.
Again, kudos for transparency, but it does show just how far the ITF's system has to go to provide meaningful comparisons. The World Tennis Number has a wider range than UTR, with 40 the number for beginners and 1 the number for top pros. UTR is 1 for beginners and 16 for top pros.
In the men's pre-qualifying, Oklahoma's Mark Mandlik, a 17-32 seed, has the lowest WTN at 3.9. There are several players with no WTN; the highest is Cal's Tim Stepanovat 16.8.
In the women's pre-qualifying, No. 11 seed DJ Bennett of Auburn has the lowest WTN at 8.9; the highest is Patrycj Niewiadomska of Northern Arizona at 16.8.
Play begins Saturday at 9 a.m. EDT in Cary and 8 a.m. CDT in Tulsa.
It's been quite a while since the USTA organized a Junior National team to take on a Division I college team, but yesterday one took place at the University of Miami, with the women's team defeating the junior 4-3, although the clinch came at 4-1. The US girls participating (the Miami website refers to it as the Junior Fed Cup team, but none of the three girls actually named to what is now called the Junior Billie Jean King Cup team played) were: Annika Penickova, Kristina Penickova, Anita Tu, Shannon Lam, Valeria Glozman and Monika Ekstrand. Results can be found here.
Nineteen-year-old Diana Shnaider of Russia, who led the North Carolina State team to last year's NCAA finals as a freshman, has reached the first WTA final of her four-month pro career at the 250 level event in Ningbo China. Shnaider, who defeated 18-year-old Linda Fruhvirtova of the Czech Republic 6-4, 6-1 in the semifinals after earning her second WTA Top 20 win in the quarterfinals over No. 14 Petra Kvitova. Shnaider, who is now up to 63 in the WTA live rankings, will face No. 7 Ons Jabeur of Tunisia in the final.
Shnaider does have a WTA 125 title on her resume, last fall's win in Uruguay, but those are considered to be as Challengers are on the men's side, not WTA tournaments.
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