Pro Circuit Update; Top Two Boys Seeds Out at Grass Courts

With the French Open juniors occupying most of my attention last week, I didn't have a chance to note some of the other winners on the Pro Circuit tournaments that finished over the weekend.

Starting in Italy, Christina McHale won a $50,000 challenger on clay, defeating No. 7 seed Ekaterina Ivanova of Russia 6-2 6-4 in the final. Although McHale was an unseeded qualifier, possibly because of a late entry, she had the highest ranking of anyone in the draw, and is now at a career high of 71 in the WTA rankings. She is playing in the WTA tournament in Birmingham England this week on grass, and has adjusted nicely, winning her first round over Anastasia Rodionova of Australia today 3-6, 7-6(7), 6-2.

The only event in the United States last week was in Hilton Head, SC. Top seed Alexandra Mueller of the US won the $10,000 tournament, defeating No. 6 seed Bojana Bobusic of Australia 6-2, 6-0 in the final. Sixteen-year-old Jan Abaza of the US reached the semifinals before losing to Mueller. Former Georgia Tech star Amanda McDowell and TCU standout Macall Harkins, seeded second, won the doubles title, over top seeds Mueller and Whitney Jones 6-3, 6-3.

This week in the US, there is a women's $25,000 tournament in El Paso, Texas and a men's $15,000 tournament in Sacramento, Calif. Beatrice Capra is the top seed in El Paso and will play her first round match on Wednesday. No. 2 seed Ashley Weinhold barely escaped qualifier Ellen Tsay in her opening round match today, beating the Stanford recruit 4-6, 6-4, 7-5.

Philip Bester of Canada and Greg Ouellette of the US are the top two seeds in Sacramento, but all eyes are on USC's Steve Johnson, the NCAA champion and eighth seed in the tournament. Johnson extended his winning streak to 36 matches today when he defeated Nikoloz Basilashvili of Georgia 6-0, 6-3. Johnson will play Alexandre Lacroix of France, who played No. 1 for Florida, in the second round. Johnson beat Lacroix 6-2, 7-6(4) in a March dual match in Gainesville. Lacroix beat 17-year-old wild card Christian Harrison 6-2, 6-2 in the opening round today. UCLA recruit Dennis Mkrtchian qualified, and in one of the most interesting first round matches yet to come, Mitchell Frank will play Dan Kosakowski. Oklahoma recruit Dane Webb received a wild card and will play a lucky loser Wednesday.

For draws and results, see the Pro Circuit page at usta.com.

Again, I must make clear that I am not in Philadelphia for the Grass Courts this year, the first time since 2004 that I haven't covered the event live, but I'm watching the results closely, and there were some sit-up-and-take-notice ones in today's second round. Stefan Kozlov, 13, beat No. 2 seed and Michigan recruit Alexander Petrone 6-4, 3-6, 7-5, and Austin Siegel defeated top seed William Kwok 7-5, 6-4. The top two seeds in the girls draw, Kyle McPhillips and Julia Elbaba advanced to the third round, as did defending champion Anna Mamalat, who beat McPhillips last year in the semifinals. For complete results, see the ITF junior website.

There are three US girls playing in the Grade 1 clay court event in Germany, with Stephanie Nauta, Lauren Herring and Jennifer Brady all advancing to the second round.

Last week Thai Kwiatkowski beat fellow American Spencer Papa in an important Tennis Europe 16-and-under tournament, the Citta di Montecatini. The pair also reached the doubles final. For more, see the Tennis Europe weekly junior recap.

May Aces; A Day at the US Open Playoff Sectional Qualifying; Grass Courts Underway; More on Fratangelo

My compilation of some of last month's notable tennis achievements is up today at the Tennis Recruiting Network. Because I spent so much time at the NCAAs last month, there are six from that competition, but several juniors also distinguished themselves last month by winning titles on the ITF Men's and Women's circuits.

I spent the day at the Midwest section's US Open Playoff Qualifying in Cincinnati. I had thought I was going to be at the site of the Western & Southern Open, the big ATP/WTA event, where the USO sectional qualifying was last year, but due to construction there, this year's event was moved to a municipal facility in Cincinnati. I will be writing a more comprehensive article about the event for the Tennis Recruiting Network later this week, but, spoiler alert, Eric Quigley won the men's event for the second year in a row, Romana Tedjakusuma, who won the Northern California event last year, won the women's event, and locals Wil Lofgren and Sandy Niehaus won the mixed doubles title. Michaela Kissell, the Marshall standout, who finished as runner-up in both the mixed and women's event, had the toughest day, winning her semifinal match from a set down, playing and losing the mixed final, and then taking the court again in the hottest part of a very warm day to play the final against Tedjakusuma. Kissell was treated for cramps after her win over junior Amanda Lin in the morning, and looked unlikely to finish the final only a couple of games into to it, but she hung in there, playing her best tennis of the day until serving at 4-5 in the first set. She vomited over the fence at 0-15, took a medical timeout, but although she continued to play after a brief treatment, she lost that game and the next two, finally retiring.

Tedjakusuma had had a straightforward semifinal win that took barely an hour, and didn't play mixed, so she was physically fresher, and that probably was the difference.

For complete draws, see the tennislink site.

I am usually covering the ITF International Grass Court Championships in Philadelphia during this week on the calendar but won't be doing so this year. The first round was played today, and top seeds Williams Kwok and Kyle McPhillips are safely through. For the draws and results, see the ITF junior website.

Bjorn Fratangelo's French Open boys championship was news in his hometown of Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review published this article today, which contains additional comments from Fratangelo about the championship match.

Fratangelo, Jabeur Take French Junior Titles

Bjorn Fratangelo hadn't won a junior slam match prior to the 2011 French Open, losing in the first round of the US Open in 2009 and 2010, the only other junior slams he's played. On Sunday in Paris, Fratangelo became the first American boy since John McEnroe in 1977 to claim the Roland Garros boys singles title when he defeated No. 14 seed Dominic Thiem of Austria 3-6, 6-3, 8-6. Ninth seed Ons Jabeur of Tunisia, the 2010 French Open girls finalist, beat No. 5 seed Monica Puig of Puerto Rico 7-6(8), 6-1 to become the first junior slam champion from that country.

Fratangelo and Thiem had not played, with the 17-year-old American relying on Mitchell Krueger, who lost to Thiem in the second round, for a scouting report on his opponent. It took a set for Fratangelo process it and gather his own information, but he took a 4-0 lead in the second set and after being broken in the fifth game of that set, Fratangelo held his serve the rest of the way.

Deep into the final set, Fratangelo began to get chances to break Thiem's serve. At 4-4, Thiem saved two break points in the four-deuce game, and saved another serving at 5-5. Serving at 5-6, Fratangelo came as close as he would come to losing his serve, but at 30-30, won the next two points to extend the match into extra games. The last time the boys final went beyond 12 games in the third set was 1989 when Fabrice Santoro of France defeated Jared Palmer of the United States 6-3, 3-6, 9-7. This year it was the American who finished with a flourish, breaking Thiem at love and holding at love, reeling off the last ten points of the match to earn the title, his first ITF Grade A.

"I knew if I could make him work on his serve, then maybe it could possibly break down," Fratangelo said in the tournament transcript. "I think I did well at that, and I did well to hold my nerve at the end to close it out."

Foxsports's Richard Evans, who is in Paris, wrote this article about Fratangelo's win. But a slight correction is in order. Fratangelo is not saying there is a shortage of hard courts in Pittsburgh, which he still calls home. It is in Naples, where he trains throughout the winter months, that Har-Tru is the preferred surface, due to the retirement mecca the area has become.

The AP article about the French junior finals at npr.org contains several photos of the boys action, and the ITF junior site has Susan Mullane's always great celebration and trophy shots accompanying their story.

Rolandgarros.com finally had its first coverage of the juniors today, which included comments from the USTA head of men's tennis Jay Berger. In the excitement of the moment, I think Berger got a little ahead of himself when he is quoted* as saying of Fratangelo, "I think he'll be a great player and will climb to into the top 50 really fast."

*[Note: I spoke with Berger today and he denies saying anything beyond Fratangelo having top 50 potential. He added he knows full well how long it takes for such a climb now. As I tweeted earlier, it is extremely annoying that Roland Garros' website would write junior stories only on the final day, and then misquote a source in the process.]

This win is obviously a huge step for Fratangelo, and by proving he can step up in the most important moments on the sport's biggest stages he has set himself apart from many of his peers. I do not want to rain on anyone's parade here, and I want to make it clear that I'm a big fan of Fratangelo and his game, but almost no one climbs into the top 50 quickly anymore. Here are the current ATP rankings of the past five boys French Open champions:

2006: Martin Klizan (Slovakia) 144
2007: Vlad Ignatic (Belarus) 165
2008: Tsung-Hua Yang (Taiwan) 302
2009: Daniel Berta (Sweden) 793
2010: Agustin Velotti (Argentina) 474

Thirty-four years is a long time from one American champion to the next, and Fratangelo deserves all the accolades he can get for his accomplishment this week. But it borders on uninformed to try to paint him as the savior of American tennis. I know he and his family are too clear-eyed to buy into that hyberbole.

The full transcript of his postmatch press conference can be found here

Kreuger & Vinsant Fall in French Doubles Final; Michigan High School Tennis; Easter Bowl TV Show Air Dates

I understand it's raining in Paris right now, so the Roland Garros boys final between Bjorn Fratangelo of the US and Dominic Thiem of Austria, scheduled for 11 a.m. in Paris, 5 a.m. Eastern Sunday, may not go as scheduled. Fratangelo spoke with usta.com after the semifinals on Friday, but before he knew who he was going to play, in this video.

Mitchell Krueger and Shane Vinsant, winners of both the ISC-Carson Grade 1 and the Easter Bowl this spring, transitioned nicely to the red clay, reaching the doubles final of the Grade A Italian Open, and following that up with a run to the finals at Roland Garros. Today they were up 7-5, 3-0 (two service breaks) on the No. 4 seeded team of Roberto Carballes Baena and Andres Artunedo Martinavarr of Spain, but lost five straight games to find themselves down a break. The Spanish team couldn't serve out the set and it went to a tiebreaker, which they won, 7-6(5). In the match tiebreaker that decided the championship, the Americans trailed from the third point and couldn't catch up, with the momentum staying with the Spaniards through their 10-5 victory. This AP article has a few comments from the Americans, as well as the results of the Longines 12-and-under competition.

Krueger and Vinsant were also featured in this video at usta.com.

Second seeds Irina Khromacheva of Russia and Maryna Zanevska of Ukraine won the girls doubles with 6-4, 7-5 victory over unseeded Victoria Kan of Russia and Demi Schuurs of the Netherlands. For more on both doubles, see the ITF junior website.



I spent a few hours at the Michigan High School Girls Tennis Division III championships this afternoon at Kalamazoo College, and enjoyed watching the No. 1 singles final between Molly Wickman of East Grand Rapids, a senior and the No. 1 seed, and Alexandria Najarian of Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook-Kingswood, a freshman and the No. 2 seed. Najarian played very aggressively, approached the net often, and hit more overheads than I think I've ever seen in girl hit in one match. She definitely took the match away from Wickman, who defends well but doesn't have the same pop on her shots. I asked her where she got her unusual game style.

"I've always been like that," Najarian said. "When I was little, I didn't really care what happened, I just tried to hit the ball as hard as I could. And then it kind of developed into an all-around game."

Najarian, who won the match 6-3, 6-1, credited Wickman with making her hit more shots than she usually needed to when trying to finish a point.

"She's a great player, she scrapes back so many balls. Some points I thought were done and I had to end it with what would be three or four winners against other players. It was exciting."

Najarian, who clinched the state championship for her team over archrival Detroit Country Day, says she plans to play high school tennis again next year, even though Michigan limits the number of USTA events a player can compete in while remaining eligible for high school tennis.

"It's nothing like any other tennis tournament. It's like family, they're like my sisters now," Najarian said of her teammates. "I love this, it's so great."

The Easter Bowl independently produces an hour-long television show for syndication and the first airings for the 2011 show are scheduled for Sunday, with additional airings throughout the month.

PRIME TICKET: (Serving all of California, Hawaii and Southern Nevada; Pacific time).
June 5: 11:30 a.m.
June 11: 1 p.m.
June 15: 3:30 p.m.
June 16: 5 p.m.
June 17: 2 p.m.
June 18: 1 p.m.
July 5: 2 p.m.
July 16: 5:30 p.m.
July 30: 2 p.m.

Fox Sports Midwest (Central time):
June 7: 2 p.m.
June 13: 2 p.m.

MSG (New York; Eastern time)
June 8: 5 p.m.
June 16 5 p.m.

Fratangelo Reaches French Boys Championship Match, Krueger & Vinsant in Doubles Final; NCAA Recap; French Development

Bjorn Fratangelo will play Dominic Thiem of Austria for the French Open boys title Sunday after each won three-setters in today's semifinals.

Fratangelo beat French wild card Tristan Lamasine 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 in Paris Friday, and although I did not see the match, it's obvious from the stats that he made the most of his opportunities, going 3 for 3 on break point chances, while Lamasine was 2 of 9, with both breaks coming in the second set. Fratangelo saved a break point at 30-40 in the final game, then won the next two points as well to claim his place in the final. Radio and TV commentator Guy McCrea tweeted this: "Impressed by what I saw of Bjorn Fratangelo. Superb mental focus 2 overcome Lamasine & fiery @rolandgarros Court 2 crowd to reach boys final."

Andrea Collarini, who was raised in Argentina but now plays for the US, reached the French boys singles final last year, losing to Agustin Velotti of Argentina.

Fratangelo's success is something of a surprise given that he's lost in the first round of his only other junior slams, the 2009 and 2010 US Opens, but he does like clay. He told me during the Easter Bowl that he started believing it was a good surface for him after he won the 18s USTA Clay Courts last year, following up his 2009 championship there in the 16s.

"Winning two years in a row, I figured, okay, maybe it's a good surface for me," Fratangelo said. "I tend to play well on it. I like to move on it a lot, and I think it's fun, because it's not just hit the ball. You have to construct points. It's fun, I like playing on it."

Prior to this trip, Fratangelo had no experience with European red clay, but it's interesting that he contradicts the interviewer in the usta.com video below, which was filmed after he won his quarterfinal match. Having trained and played primarily on the Har-Tru, Fratangelo denies the interviewer's interjection that it's completely different.

Fratangelo's opponent in the final is Eddie Herr champion Thiem, the No. 14 seed, who made an impressive comeback to defeat Mate Delic of Croatia 3-6, 6-3, 6-1. Thiem got only 32 first serves in, but 10 of them were aces, a remarkable ratio.

In Sunday's girls championship, two recent junior slam finalists will get a second chance to capture the winner's trophy. Fifth seed Monica Puig of Puerto Rico, who lost the Australian girls title this year to An-Sophie Mestach of Belgium, beat second seed Irina Khromacheva 6-3, 1-6, 7-5 today and will meet 2010 Roland Garros girls finalist Ons Jabeur of Tunisia, the ninth seed, who defeated No. 3 seed Caroline Garcia of France 6-2, 1-6, 6-2. Puig saved three break points at 5-5 in the third, then broke the 16-year-old left-hander to earn a spot in the final.


Unseeded Mitchell Krueger and Shane Vinsant reached the boys doubles final with a 6-2, 6-2 victory over Miki Jankovic of Serbia and his partner Dimitar Kuzmanov of Bulgaria. Their opponents in Saturday's final are No. 4 seeds Andres Artunedo Martinavarr and Roberto Carballes Baena of Spain. The girls doubles final is also seeded vs. unseeded, with Victoria Kan of Russia and Demi Schuurs of the Netherlands meeting second seeds Khromacheva of Russia and Maryna Zanevska of Ukraine.

As usual, there has been no junior coverage at rolandgarros.com, but the draws are here. The boys doubles final should begin between 7 and 8 a.m. EDT Saturday, as it follows the girls final. The ITF junior website has this article from today's semifinals.

Speaking of doubles, former Stanford All-American Scott Lipsky captured the mixed doubles title on Thursday with Australian Casey Dellacqua. Matt Cronin's article about the pair's championship run is available at usta.com.

An interesting investigation into the French system of development and why it produces substantial numbers of great players but not Grand Slam champions can be found in this Wall Street Journal story by Tom Perotta. I've heard other US coaches mention the problem with "full scholarship" players at academies, and the entitlement attitude that creates, so I wasn't entirely surprised to read this:

Patrick Mouratoglou, who runs one of the country's few private academies, recently stopped giving full scholarships to his players. He supports the federation's new philosophy, but said it needs to go further.

"It's much too late to do it when they are 22," he said. "You have to do it when they're 10."

And finally, my recap of the NCAA Singles and Doubles championships can be found at the Tennis Recruiting Network. If you didn't have a chance to read all the daily articles at zootennis, this is a chance to get a broader look at the six-day event.

2011 NCAA Notes and Observations

Sports Illustrated's Jon Wertheim writes a regular feature after every Grand Slam, with notes and observations that don't fit into the standard article (or in his case, mailbag,) format. Before the memories start to fade, I'm going to do the same for the just-completed NCAAs. Some of these are important, some obviously aren't. I hope you can tell the difference.

Recognition is overdue for Brent who picked Florida over Stanford 4-3 for the women's title and SoCal Fan who predicted USC's win over Virginia 4-3 in the men's final. They've both won the TopSpin4 video game contest. Fortuntately, I have two copies of the game, one Playstation 3 and one Xbox 360, so I'll just flip a coin to see who gets first pick. Brent and SoCal Fan: Please post a comment to the contest post with your contact information (I won't post it of course), so I can get your prizes to you.
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The team event was more competitive than I can ever remember, with eight matches, 5 women's and 3 men's, coming down to the last match on with the teams tied at 3. Two of those, the Baylor win over UCLA in the men's round of 16, and the Florida win over Stanford in the women's championship, were settled in third-set tiebreakers.
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I used to think the 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. finishes for the day's last round of 16 were bad luck, with lighting failures(Texas A&M 2009) or rain (Georgia 2010) gumming up the works. But there were no such excuses available at Stanford, and if anything, the cold weather should have encouraged faster play. I have it on good authority that the average NCAA match takes 3:45. I'm not a math Ph.d., but even I can figure out that the last match, scheduled for 6pm, is going to start at 8pm or later. And the home team, who may want the night match for ticket sales, actually loses its home court advantage when the fans leave after the doubles point finishes. I love having the men and women together Grand Slam style, which is part of the issue, but I think an 8 am start must be considered.
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Great to see Bay area junior Mackenzie McDonald at the men's team event after a serious illness kept him from competing at Carson, the Easter Bowl or any other tournament since. He says he's feeling better now.
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Hobee's blueberry coffee cake is all that.
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The Stanford and USC pep bands added aural excitement each time they played, but they were restricted from playing except before the match, in the break after doubles and after the match.
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USTA Player Development was well represented at the NCAAs, with Senior manager of Junior and Collegiate Tennis Erica Perkins heading the list that included Tom Jacobs, Senior Manager of Business and Administration for Player Development, Perkins' recently hired assistant Elissa Kinard, women's coach Marc Lucero and men's national lead coach Mike Sell. Although I didn't get a chance to say hello, I understand USTA president Jon Vegosen and his wife Shari where also at the matches prior to a USTA board meeting.
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The USTA College Day was a great opportunity to learn about the recruiting process and also get some candid advice about what to expect from collegiate tennis. I could go to one every month and still learn something, so if your section sponsors one, don't pass it up.
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I witnessed two of the most bizarre endings to a tennis match I've ever seen during the individual tournament and both involved Michael Shabaz of Virginia. I still don't know what possessed Marcelo Arevalo of Tulsa to curse in Spanish so early and so often in his first round match with Shabaz that he was defaulted at 2-0 in the first set. Nor do I understand what was going on in Shabaz's mind when he violated a cardinal rule of tennis after a point penalty in the semifinals against Johnson. Tanking is a fact of life in tennis, and I've seen that behavior in all its facets on the junior and college beat. But I can think of only one other time that I saw a retirement based on anger, and it involved a 16-year-old at the Orange Bowl.
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The Stanford men drew a bigger crowd for their Saturday night quarterfinal match with Virginia than the women did for the final against Florida.
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Some of the best people in tennis don't carry US passports, and that's true in college tennis too. The international student-athletes are generally great representatives of their universities and add welcome diversity--in cultures and game styles--to the sport. But after all the 'what's wrong with American tennis' talk, it was heartening to see 7 of the 8 semifinalists coming from the US junior ranks. Juricova's win snapped a four-year streak of American women's champions. The men have a three-year streak going.
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Speaking of former singles champions, I saw several of them in Palo Alto. Mallory Cecil, the 2009 champion, is serving as a volunteer assistant at Duke and told me she hopes to complete her degree in 2013. Laura Granville, the 2000 & 2001 champion, is back at Stanford finishing her degree. Amber Liu, another back-to-back champion for Stanford in 2003 & 2004, visited for the women's team final, with husband Michael Chang and their baby daughter. Audra Cohen, the 2007 champion, was there in her capacity as USTA Collegiate team coach. The other collegiate team coaches, Jamea Jackson of Oklahoma State, Bo Hodge of Alabama and Ryan Sachire of Notre Dame, were also watching the early rounds of the individual tournament to identify likely future team members.
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As a coach, there's nobody I'd rather have in a last match on court than Duke's Reka Zsilinszka, unless it's Daniel Nguyen of USC or Lauren Embree of Florida.
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Now for the curious case of the unranked participant. The only way to get into the NCAA individual championships is to be ranked in the top 125. If you are, you will get in if you're the top player in your conference. If you aren't ranked, your conference will not get a representative. So when William and Mary's Jeltje Loomans appeared in the selection list, but not in the rankings, I had to find out why. Thanks to NCAA women's sub-committee head Jason Hayes, I got an answer. Loomans was in fact ranked 125 on the list the committee received. But Cal turned in their results from the Pac-10 championships after that list was distributed, and Anett Schutting moved into the rankings, at 104, bumping Loomans out. It wasn't Schutting that suffered, as she was ranked too low to be considered, but an alternate missed out. That rankings rerun may have kept Nadja Gilchrist of Georgia(59) or Janette Bejikova of South Florida(61) out of the women's draw.
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The online scoreboard was just short of a disaster. Many of you have voiced your frustrations regarding the frequent server crashes which I was told were due to too much traffic. Sometimes the livestream worked fine, but there was no way to know the score unless you opened each court feed, where it appeared on the bottom of the screen. On the onsite scoreboard, which was a different system, there was no point-by-point scoring on courts 1-3 while matches were being played on the south courts. And there was no way to know when at the south courts what was going on at the main stadium. Nor was the team score visible anywhere on the south court scoreboards. Problems develop in complicated systems like this, but a backup plan, perhaps based on the "live" scoring that many schools still use, should have been in place. Posting scores to twitter or facebook is hardly ideal, but it is better than nothing. I felt a responsibility to tweet more when I knew the scoreboard was down, and I heard many times over how much it was appreciated, but I am not a substitute for an effective and reliable system. Also frustrating was the lack of an automated system to transfer the scores of the completed matches to the website with a few minutes of their completion. Finding the results of NCAA tournament matches should not be a challenge for a college tennis fan.
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I loved the continuous loop of NCAA team championship moments that played in the cafe and outside the stadium. Any player lunching at Jimmy V's who hadn't recently seen last year's Burdette sisters tackle gasped and groaned when Lindsay took down Mallory on the replay. There's a great sense of history at Stanford; I sat in the John McEnroe corner in the media center.
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Tennis SIDs in attendance often juggle cameras, flipcams, blackberrys (for tweeting) and laptops (for live blogging) during just one match, while also doing press notes. Plus they're called upon to maintain a professional demeanor when the players they know well and care about are suffering an agonizing defeat. Tough, tough job. Thanks to all of you for doing it well.