Ena Shibahara won her first Pro Circuit singles title Sunday afternoon in Spring Texas, with the former UCLA All-American defeating lucky loser Iva Jovic 6-2, 4-6, 6-3. The 26-year-old Shibahara, who grew up in Southern California but now plays for Japan, still has a successful career in WTA doubles to attend to, but has been reapplying herself to singles in the the last year and now will move into the Top 400 for the first time when this week's 35 points are added. Jovic led 3-1 in the final set, but seemed to hit a wall physically in the sixth game, when she was broken at love. After playing seven matches in seven days, that is understandable, but the 16-year-old will not be able to rest Monday, as she is playing her first round match in the BNP Paribas Open women's qualifying in Indian Wells instead.
I wasn't sure if Sunday's BNP Paribas schedule would feature all 24 first round
women's qualifying matches, and it did not, with eight first round matches being played Monday; Jovic vs No. 4 seed Taylor Townsend is one of those eight.
In today's action at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden, one of the young wild cards has advanced, with 2022 Wimbledon girls champion Liv Hovde beating No. 18 seed Aliaksandra Sasnovich of Belarus 6-2, 6-4. It's the second WTA Top 100 win for the 18-year-old from Texas, who will play the winner of Monday's match between No. 3 seed Harriet Dart of Great Britain and Darja Semenistaja of Latvia. Hovde has a previous win over Dart, which came two years ago at a $60K in California.
Sixteen-year-old wild card Christasha McNeil may have had the most impressive showing of the day in Indian Wells however, holding a match point against 2 seed and WTA No. 79 Bernard Pera before falling 5-7, 6-2, 7-6(6). Pera served for the match at 5-4, but McNeil broke and held; in the tiebreaker Pera led 4-2, but with two serves at 5-4, lost them both, giving McNeil a match point. But she also lost both of her serves and Pera converted her first match point to survive.
Other Americans advancing to the final round of women's qualifying are Kayla Day, Claire Liu and Robin Montgomery.
Top seed Claremont-Mudd-Scripps avenged its loss in last year's final to the University of Chicago and prevented a Maroons three-peat with a 4-2 win in today's
ITA Women's Division III Team Indoor Championships at Top Seed Tennis in Nicholasville Kentucky. The Athenas took the doubles point and got wins at 1, 3, and 5 singles, with Chicago taking lines 4 and 6. Lindsay Eisenman clinched the title, the team's second, with a 1-6, 6-4, 6-1. Last year's loss to Chicago in the Team Indoor final was the only loss of the year for CMS, the two-time defending NCAA champions. For a recap of the final, see
this article from the CMS website.
One of Tennis Europe's five Super Category tournaments concluded today, with top seed Jana Kovackova of the Czech Republic and Andrei Radu of Romania taking the titles at the
Kungens Kanna & Drottningens Pris in Stockholm Sweden. Reigning Junior Orange Bowl 14s champion Kovackova defeated No. 12 seed Xinran Sun of China
6-3, 6-2, with all six of Kovackova's wins coming in straight sets. She also won the doubles title.
No. 7 seed Radu, who lost in the first round at Les Petits As, defeated No. 6 seed Johann Nagel-Heyer of Germany 7-5, 6-0. The only American competing in either draw was wild card Tomas Laukys, who reached the round of 16.
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