Kennedy and Mayew Meet Again for Another ITF J300 Title, Schuman and Iyengar Face Off in Girls Final at Pan American Championships; Weber and Gamble Win Boys Doubles Title, Chung and Hamilton Claim Girls Doubles Championship

©Colette Lewis 2024--
Spring Texas--

The last International Tennis Federation Regional Championships for American players took place back in March in San Diego California, with Jack Kennedy defeating Ian Mayew 7-5, 7-5 for his first ITF J300 title. They play again Saturday for the title at the second ITF Regional championship of the year at the Pan American Championships, after both posted straight-sets victories Friday morning at the Giammalva Racquet Club.

Mayew, seeded fourth, ended the run of No. 11 seed Jack Secord with a 6-3, 6-2 win, a result he attributed to a bit of a strategy change in his own game and the strength and stamina advantage he had over the 16-year-old from Lake Forest Illinois. 

"I'm keeping it simple, I'm not overdoing it, not overplaying," said Mayew, who turns 18 at the end of next month. "I have a tendency to go pretty big and just send balls, so I'm really locking it down this week and keeping it consistent. I'm playing with a lot more margin, more shape on the ball, really trying to mimic the men's game, try to make it physical out there."

Mayew, who has yet to drop a set in the tournament, got early breaks in both sets and felt in control throughout, although he recognized that Secord was a dangerous opponent.

"He been playing really well, beating Jagger[Leach] and Dom[Mosejczuk], top guys in the world, so clearly he was in form," said the  Cary North Carolina resident. "It makes a world difference, when you're a couple of years older. You get later in the tournament, you feel you can still dictate points, go deep in the rallies. It's a huge advantage being a couple of years older than he is, but I'm sure in a couple of years, he's not going to be playing this tournament; he'll be on to bigger and better things."

Kennedy, seeded third, also has gotten through his first four matches without dropping a set, although his 6-4, 6-4 win over No. 8 seed Benjamin Willwerth Friday had its share of tense moments.

Service holds were the norm in the first set, with Willwerth having a generally easier time with his, but Kennedy converted his second break point in Willwerth's service game to go up 5-4 and put away an overhead to secure the opening set.

Kennedy broke to open the second set, but Willwerth battled through a lengthy second game to break back and held for 2-1. Broken again to go down 3-2, Willwerth broke back for 3-3, but Kennedy got another break for a 4-3 lead and made that one hold up.

"He was playing well, especially his serve," said Kennedy, a 16-year-old from New York. "It was a really tough serve to read. As the match went on, I did get a read on it. I think his energy level dropped a little bit and his first serve percentage was lower than it was in the first set, so it was easier to break. But he's a tough player to play, doesn't give you too much rhythm, comes to the net a lot, has great hands, so it was a tough match today, and I'm glad I got through it."

Kennedy said he knows Mayew's game well, not just from the San Diego final, but also as his doubles partner at the Roland Garros and Wimbledon Junior Championships this year.

"I think we have an idea of how we both play," said Kennedy, who reached the Kalamazoo 18s final in August. "Obviously in doubles, it's a little different game style, but both of us have gotten better since San Diego. He's getting a little stronger, a little faster, all the little things. But I was 5-2 down in San Diego, so tomorrow I've got to start a little better, I think it was just the nerves then."

Mayew and Kennedy traded many a drop shot in the San Diego final, but Mayew said he has been using that shot less in the past several months.

"I've just got more confidence in my backhand and don't have to bail out with a drop shot as much anymore," Mayew said. "I've definitely been working on that a lot. I'll use the drop shot more as a last resort, and not rely on it as much as I have in the past."

Aside from that, Mayew is planning on few changes in his approach to Saturday's final.

"I had set points," Mayew said of their San Diego contest. "I was playing the right way, but at this level the margins are so small. One point here and there and he took the set. Obviously, he's going to be smacking the ball out there, and we'll see how it goes, but we'll both go out there and just battle, just like we did in San Diego."

In addition to smacking the ball, Kennedy will also resort to a fist pump and a "vamos" in tribute to his idol Rafael Nadal, who will retire this year after competing for Spain in the Davis Cup.

"He's the reason why I started playing and really got into tennis," said Kennedy, who wasn't born when Nadal won his first Roland Garros men's title in 2005. "He's a great role model to have and we're lucky to have had him on the tour for so long. I'd love to have his firepower one day, but his vocal firepower, we have that similarity, and that's something I can emulate now."

No. 6 seed Aspen Schuman lost 6-2, 7-5 in the Pan Am semifinals last year to eventual champion Maya Joint of Australia, who is now 113 in the WTA rankings. With her 6-1, 6-1 victory today over No. 8 seed Claire An, her third win over An since June, Schuman has reached her second ITF J300 final, where she'll face another familiar face in No. 5 seed Maya Iyengar.

Although she dropped only two games, Schuman still needed 90 minutes to grind through some very long rallies and multiple deuce games.

"I knew that I had to compete my best against Claire," said Schuman, a 17-year-old from Menlo Park California. "She really made me work for it; I was running quite a bit today, but it was a really good match and I thought we both played well."

Schuman reached her first J300 final in August of 2023 at College Park, and feels that will help her Saturday.

"I think since the last time [in a J300 final] I've gotten a lot of great experiences," said Schuman, who played the Australian Open this year and US Open Junior Championships twice, while also competing on the SoCal Pro Circuit during the past summer. "I think I've learned a lot, and played a lot of big tournaments since then, so yeah, I feel ready."

Schuman has also continued to add to her game.

"I've been working on trying on being more of an all-court player, getting to the net more, being more aggressive on my serve and return," Schuman said. "I've tried to be more aggressive and trust my shots, and I've definitely seen an improvement in that this week. It's a combination of being consistent and aggressive, but I've definitely been working on the aggressive side of it."

The drama of the day came in the second girls semifinal, with No. 5 seed Maya Iyengar watching a 5-2 third set lead evaporate against No. 2 seed Annika Penickova before finally securing a 3-6, 6-4, 7-5 victory and a spot in her first ITF J300 final.

Penickova looked to heading to a routine straight-sets victory, leading 6-3, 4-3, with Iyengar serving at 15-40. But Iyengar saved those two break points to hold a three-deuce game, then broke Penickova, who was up 40-15, in another three-deuce game to take a 5-4 lead. When Iyengar closed out the set on her first opportunity at 40-30, she felt the tenor of the match change.

"I sensed that she kind of messed up that game," Iyengar said of Penickova's failure to get the break. "And at 4-all, she was up 40-15 in that game, I think also. I was just staying in it, because I know how she plays, it's up and down. But yeah, I think that was the turning point for sure."

Iyengar wasn't happy with her own level in the first set, but understood that she would have to shrug off the succession of groundstroke winners that her 15-year-old opponent could blast past her.

"She gave me more errors in the second set, but in the first set I wasn't used to the pace and she definitely took the racquet out of my hand," said Iyengar, a 17-year-old from Arizona. "But at the end of the second set I started getting going."

Iyengar led 4-0 and 5-1 in the third set, but Penickova didn't concede, holding for 5-2, then saving three match points with Iyengar serving at 40-0, the first two with forehand winners, the third with an overrule from the chair umpire on the far sideline.

Penickova held for 5-4 and Iyengar received a code violation warning for racquet abuse after that game. She didn't get close to a match point serving for it a second time, double faulting at 15-40, but after coming all the way back, Penickova couldn't hold at 5-all, with two backhand errors and a double fault giving Iyengar a third chance to serve out the match. 

Penickova again made her earn it, saving two more match points from 40-15, but she netted a forehand to give Iyengar a sixth match point, which Iyengar won when Penickova sent a backhand wide.

"Not one error was coming off her racquet," Iyengar said of Penickova's comeback and match point saves. "I also played a little too conservative, because I wasn't sure if I should go for it or not, because she was missing earlier. She looked so tired, also, so I thought she would make some errors, but she played incredible at the end. At 5-all I think she was getting more fatigued and I recognized it, tried to hit deeper to the backhand, trying to think through my strategy, rather than thinking, oh my gosh, I just missed match points. At 5-all I was ok, I'm going to lose if I don't focus on a strategy to get her out of this unbelievable tennis."

After the two-and-a-half-hour match, Iyengar and Penickova shared a long embrace at the net.

"She's like my best friend and we're staying together this week," Iyengar said. "We were talking about it all week; we're going to have the best match, and I think was a good match."

Iyengar and Schuman played twice this past June in J200s in Mexico, with Schuman winning both times, in a semifinal 7-6(1), 7-6(2) and a final 7-5, 6-3.

"Both times I had plenty of chances," said Iyengar, whose biggest title came at a J100 last year, where she beat Schuman in the final. "She's a great player, and she'll make me work for every point, especially since I'm a little bit tired too. But I think last time, I played a little too conservative, focused too much on the result."

The doubles champions were crowned Friday afternoon, and as with the singles, all participants were from the United States. In the boys final, unseeded James Weber and Jon Gamble defeated No. 8 seeds Calvin Baierl and Joseph Oyebog Junior 7-6(2), 6-4.

Weber and Gamble had the tougher time holding serve in the first set, needing to win deciding points at 3-all and 4-all. Oyebog and Baierl were rolling along, getting the break at 5-all with Baierl serving for the first set at 30-0, when the momentum suddenly changed. Baierl had not lost a point on serve in the set at that point, but they dropped three straight points to go down 30-40. Weber missed a return for the first deciding point that Oyebog and Baierl had faced on serve, and he double faulted to send the set into a tiebreaker. 

"It was a momentum shift," said Weber, an 18-year-old from Georgia. "They made a mistake on one of the points and we were able to capitalize on that. After that, they weren't as loud, we were firing ourselves up, and they were getting quieter."

Gamble and Weber took control of the tiebreaker early going up 5-0, and closing it out without any drama.

In the second set, Weber again held on a deciding point, and they finally were able to break Oyebog at 3-all. After holds by Gamble and Baierl, Weber served for the championship, but at 40-15, they each missed a volley to send it to a deciding point. Weber hit a good first serve and Baierl blistered his return down the line, but it just missed wide according to Gamble and the chair umpire.

It's the first ITF J300 title for Gamble and Weber, although they recently won their first title together at an ITF J100 in South Africa, and had reached the semifinals of the J300 there when the tournament was abandoned due to three days of rain.

"This is just our second J300, but in the first one we got semis and it rained," said Gamble, a 17-year-old from Las Vegas. "We kind of got robbed of that one, I feel we were really synching well that week and I told him, let's go get the one in Texas."

Gamble and Weber took out No. 5 seeds Ronit Karki and Jack Satterfield in the second round, defeated the No. 3 seeds and 2023 Pan Am finalists Willwerth and Noah Johnston in the quarterfinals and saved three match points in their 7-6(5), 3-6, 13-11 win over No. 2 seeds and 2023 Pan Am champions Jagger Leach and Matisse Farzam. 

Gamble, who now has won nine ITF junior doubles titles, had one explanation for those impressive results.

"It's the power of friendship," Gamble said.

Girls doubles champions Alanis Hamilton and Kayla Chung took their second ITF J300 title Friday, adding the Pan American Championships to their title at March's Regional Championships in San Diego. The No. 6 seeds defeated No. 2 seeds An and Shannon Lam 7-6(3), 6-4, with the four friends enjoying their mix-and-match pairings.

Hamilton and An, who lost in the doubles final last year, have played together many times, but playing against An was a unusual experience for her.

"We're honestly just having fun," said Hamilton, a 17-year-old from Arkansas, who will be joining the University of North Carolina in January. "I could tell. We were both excited to meet in the finals because we'd both defended our points. I haven't played her in doubles in three years, so we both wanted to see what it was like to be on the other side, and I think it was really fun."

Chung and Hamilton, who won the bronze ball this year at the USTA National 18s in San Diego, did not lose a set all week, with their comfort at the net giving them an advantage.

"After the San Diego ITF and the Hard Courts, we knew coming in that we had a great chance of coming out on top," said the 17-year-old Chung, who now has nine ITF doubles titles. "I feel like the way we play, a lot of teams aren't used to seeing people at the net, so it gives us a huge advantage, an element of surprise," Hamilton said.

The first set of the final featured just two breaks, with Lam and An taking a 4-2 lead but surrendering the break in the next game. Chung held on a deciding point for 4-all, with the next four games service holds. The tiebreaker featured three double faults by An and Lam, giving Hamilton and Chung all the margin they needed.

Chung and Hamilton got an early break and held on to it with Chung coming from 15-40 down at 3-1 to hold. At 2-5, An saved three match points with some big serving, and Chung was broken in the next game to get the set back on serve. But with Lam serving, she and An fell behind 15-40, and although they saved a fourth match point, Chung and Hamilton converted the fifth to run their winning streak on the ITF Junior Circuit to eight matches, but it may end there.

""She's going to school," said Chung, "so I think this is our last junior ITF, I'm guessing, unless something happens at the end of the year."

The two singles finals are both scheduled for 10 a.m. Central time Saturday.