Three JTCC Wild Cards Advance to Round of 16; Both No. 4 Seeds Ousted in Second Round of College Park ITF J300; Nine Americans Advance in US Open Qualifying

©Colette Lewis 2023--

College Park MD--

All three boys wild cards from the Junior Tennis Champions Center took advantage of their familiar surroundings and the home crowd support Tuesday, beating seeded players to advance to the round of 16 at the ITF J300 Wayne K. Curry Prince George's County International Junior Tennis Championships presented by Laurel Spring School.

Cyrus Mahjoob, who just completed a whirlwind courtship with the University of Georgia, has lost only three games in his two matches this week.

Yesterday he defeated Nicolas Oliveira of Brazil 6-1, 6-1; today he took out No. 9 seed Fernando Cavallo of Argentina 6-0, 6-1, with both matches barely an hour in length.

Mahjoob, who reached the 18s Clay Court Nationals final last month, attributed much of his success to keeping his error level low.

"Right off the bat today, I wasn't giving anything away for free," said Mahjoob, who turns 18 next month. "I was making him play every ball, hitting the ball very well, making him feel he needs to do something special with the ball. Not giving him anything, I think I broke his confidence pretty early in the match and made him go for more."

The comfort level that Mahjoob has at JTCC, where he has trained for 11 years, obviously made it easier for him to adjust to last week's chaos, when he contacted Georgia about a possible spot on their team, was accepted and enrolled in the space of four days.

"I had to move down, I signed up for classes Friday morning and actually went to class 45 minutes later," said Mahjoob, who had de-committed from Michigan after the coaching change there. "The professors didn't even know what I was doing in there; I had to introduce myself, tell them, 'I'm sorry, I'm not in the database right, but I swear I'm in the right place.'"

Georgia's associate head coach Jamie Hunt, who has been in College Park this week, called it the "quickest recruitment ever," but has certainly liked what he's seen of Mahjoob the past two days.

"I have been just super impressed," Hunt said. "The thing that stands out is the competitor he is. He wants to win every single point and is disappointed when he doesn't. He did so many things well out there, stepped up in the court, applied pressure when he had the opportunity to finish at the net, defended really well; his winner error ratio was like 10 to zero."

After losing to Kyle Kang in the round of 16 at Kalamazoo, Mahjoob had a fortuitous meeting with head coach Manny Diaz in the TSA security line.

"He told Manny, hey coach my best friend Ryan Colby is coming to you guys," Hunt said of the impromptu meeting. "They started talking and Manny texted me and Ryan and said he'd met Cyrus and that he'd been released from Michigan, so obviously we were very interested. We asked if he could come on a visit, he came on a visit 24 hours later, and committed on Monday night. It was the quickest recruitment ever, but he fits everything we're looking for."

Mahjoob will play unseeded Atakan Karahan of Turkey, who defeated No. 8 seed Kaylan Bigun 6-0, 7-6(5).

Stiles Brockett, another of the JTCC wild cards, is working considerably longer hours for his victories, having beaten Volodymyr Iakubenko of Ukraine 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 on Monday and No. 10 seed Kevin Edengren of Sweden, a recent University of Florida recruit, 6-2, 1-6, 6-3 today. Brockett's next opponent is No. 6 seed Rei Sakamoto of Japan.

While Mahjoob and Brockett have a long history at JTCC, the third wild card, Kase Schinnerer, has been in College Park only since the beginning of this year. Schinnerer, who won his wild card in a tournament last week, got the biggest win of the three today, taking down No. 4 seed Tomaz Berkieta of Poland 6-1, 6-2.

"I knew from the start he was going to hit the ball bigger than me," said the 17-year-old from Pennsylvania. "But if I could just hang in there at the start, get up. And he started a little slow, missed a few shots going for it, and I was like, just stay in there, stay in there, keep making him play. He had a little bit of an off day, so I was able to dictate without being in control of points. I was a little bit defensive, but it worked; I changed things up with the slice, changed up my serve, so yeah, it was a good match today."

Schinnerer noted the benefit of training with players of the calibre of Mahjoob and Brockett.

"They are some of hardest working guys you'll ever see," said Schinnerer. "I'm from a small town in Pennsylvania and my mom coached my brother(14s Nationals finalist Erik) and I. Coming from somewhere like that, first in Florida and now here, having the coaches we have here, the players who have come of out of here. All the things we've been working on, things are starting to come together."

While Berkieta was the highest seed to lose, he was far from alone, with 7 of the 16 falling today.

Matthew Forbes defeated No. 14 seed Jangjun Kim of Korea, Schinnerer's next opponent, Alexander Frusina, defeated No. 16 seed Tianhui Zhang of China, and Charlie Robertson of Great Britain defeated No. 5 seed Arthur Gea of France 6-7(4), 7-6(3), 6-0. Forbes faces No. 3 seed Branko Djuric of Serbia, who beat wild card Calvin Baierl 6-3, 6-3.

Top seed Joao Fonseca of Brazil breezed to a 6-0, 6-1 win over Mikael Arseneault of Canada, but No. 2 seed Iliyan Radulov of Bulgaria had to save two match points trailing 3-6, 3-5 to end the run of qualifier Nikita Filin 3-6, 7-5, 6-3. Fonseca's opponent in the round of 16 is No. 13 seed Alexander Razeghi, who defeated qualifier Nicolas Arseneault of Canada 6-0, 6-3.

The only qualifier remaining in either draw is 16-year-old Aspen Schuman, who defeated No. 6 seed Mara Gae of Romania 4-6, 6-3, 6-2. Other girls seeds to fall in their first singles matches of the tournament are No. 10 seed Lily Taylor of Australia, who was beaten by University of Michigan recruit Emily Sartz-Lunde of Norway 6-4, 6-2; No. 15 seed Elizara Yaneva of Bulgaria, who lost to Hephzibah Oluwadare of Great Britain 6-2, 4-6, 7-5, and No. 4 seed Mingge Xu of Great Britain, who dropped a three-and-a-half-hour match to Ashton Bowers 7-6(2), 1-6, 6-4.

Bowers admitted the match was a war of attrition by the third set.

"I honestly felt really tired," said Bowers, a 17-year-old from Georgia who has committed to Auburn for 2024. "At the beginning it wasn't very hot outside, but the heat definitely caught up to both of us and I think the pace of the match was getting slower, but I feel pretty good right now."

Bowers had not seen Xu play, but had a strategy from what she had heard about Xu's game style.

"I knew she was a very powerful player, liked her forehand and has a big serve," Bowers said. "So I had to neutralize the points and serve well myself, which I did."

Bowers went up 3-0 in the final set, and winning those early deuce games steeled her resolve when Xu began to creep closer.

"I won all three deuce games, so I was feeling really confident, even after losing 1-6 in the second," Bowers said. "I had the confidence, even after she won a few games, that I had a good chance to win the match."

Bowers will next face friend Maya Joint, the No. 13 seed, who defeated qualifier Monika Ekstrand 7-5, 4-6, 6-2. Joint recently changed to representing Australia, where her father is from.

Top seed Mayu Crossley had a tough first set against Katie Rolls, but came through in straight sets, 7-6(3), 6-0. No. 2 seed Emerson Jones of Australia defeated Krisha Mahendran of India 6-3, 6-2.

The top seeds in girls doubles lost in their first match of the tournament, with Alanis Hamilton and Kayla Chung beating No. 1 seeds Teodora Kostovic of Serbia and Gloriana Nahum of Benin 6-3, 6-4. In the quarterfinals, Hamilton and Chung will meet Olivia Center and Kate Fakih in a rematch of the Girls 18s final 10 days ago in San Diego, which Center and Fakih won 6-7(5), 6-1, 6-4.

The first day of qualifying is complete at the US Open with five men and four women advancing to the second round. Current collegians Fiona Crawley, a senior at North Carolina and Michael Zheng, a sophomore at Columbia picked up the first slam qualifying victories of their careers.

First round qualifying results of Americans, Tuesday August 22:

Patrick Kypson(Texas A&M) d. Juri Rodionov[7] 6-4, 6-4

Brandon Holt(USC) d. Alexander Ritschard(Virginia) 6-1, 6-4

Martin Damm[WC] d. Federico Delbonis 6-4, 4-6, 7-5

Michael Zheng(Columbia)[WC] d. Franco Agamenone 6-2, 6-3

Aidan Mayo[WC] d. Federico Ferreira Silva 3-6, 6-1, 6-4

Elli Mandlik d. Amandine Hesse 6-3, 6-4

Katie Volynets[25] d. Barbors Palicova 6-3, 6-4

Sachia Vickery d. Irene Burillo Escorihuela 6-7(8), 6-3, 6-0

Fiona Crawley(North Carolina)[WC] d. Reka Luca Jani 6-1, 6-7(5), 7-6(6)

The San Diego and Kalamazoo 18s finalists both lost their first round matches, although Svajda certainly held his own in the first set against ATP No. 111 James Duckworth of Australia.

Eugenie Bouchard d. Katherine Hui[WC] 6-2 6-3

James Duckworth[12] d. Trevor Svajda 7-6(12) 6-2

The full results can be found here. Wednesday's schedule, featuring 16-year-old Valerie Glozman, who won a round in qualifying last year as a wild card from the 18s Nationals, and 2022 US Open girls finalist Lucie Havlickova, 18, of the Czech Republic.

Filin Aces Hot, Humid Weather on Day One of ITF J300 in College Park; US Open Qualifying Begins Tuesday with 64 Matches, Including National 18s Finalists

©Colette Lewis 2023--
College Park MD--

Pleasant summer temperatures for the qualifying weekend turned to conditions more typical of this time of year in the Washington DC area, with the "feels like" temperature approaching 100 degrees today for the first round of the  ITF J300 Wayne K. Curry Prince George's County International Junior Tennis Championships presented by Laurel Spring School. 

The best strategy was to get through your match quickly, and qualifier Nikita Filin did just that, bombing ace after ace in his late afternoon victory over wild card Jagger Leach.  

Filin, who earned the 6-4, 6-3 decision over Leach without facing a break point, said he had a career day serving.

"I'm not even joking, I had like 20, 25 aces," said the 17-year-old left-hander from Illinois. "I think I averaged one or two per game. It's one of the best serving performances of my life, to be honest. Everything felt like it was clicking, everything went to plan."

Filin got an early break in the second set, and had no trouble serving out the match, hitting two first serve aces for 30-0, and a second serve ace to earn three match points, only one of which was necessary.

"That just summed up the whole match, how I was serving," said Filin, who will join the Ohio State Buckeyes in 2024.

With four wins under his belt now, all in straight sets, Filin is convinced he can continue his streak, even when facing No. 2 seed Iliyan Radulov of Bulgaria in Tuesday's second round.

"Obviously he's really good," Filin said. "I've never seen him play, but I'm pretty confident in my game, and I'll give him a run for his money tomorrow. I come to the net a lot, find the forehand a lot, don't let them get a rhythm on anything. So hopefully that will work tomorrow."

Filin was one of three qualifiers to reach the second round. Mitchell Lee defeated Maxwell Exsted 6-2, 3-6, 6-4 and Nicolas Arseneault of Canada beat Seungmin Park of Korea 7-6(0), 6-2.

Four wild cards advanced to the third round, three of whom train at the Junior Tennis Champions Center: Stiles Brockett, who beat Volodymyr Iakubenko of Ukraine 2-6, 6-3, 6-4; Kase Schinnerer, who defeated Maximo Zeitune of Argentina 4-6, 7-5, 6-4, and Cyrus Mahjoob, who cruised past Nicolas Oliveira of Brazil 6-1, 6-1. The fourth wild card winner was Calvin Baierl, who defeated Segundo Goity Zapico of Argentina 6-3, 6-2.

The girls qualifiers and wild cards had similar success, with Aspen Schuman defeating wild card Trinetra Vijayakumar 6-3, 6-2 and Monika Ekstrand beating Claire An, 6-1, 2-6, 6-1. Three wild cards advanced to the second round: 2023 San Diego 16s finalist Anita Tu, who beat Anna Maria Fedotova of the Dominican Republic 7-6(4), 6-3, and the 13-year-old Penickova twins, with Annika defeating wild card Reiley Rhodes 6-0, 6-3 and Kristina beating Anastasiia Firman of Ukraine 4-6, 6-3, 6-2.

The hopes of playing all the first round of doubles Monday were not realized with the length of the singles matches, but both USTA National 18s champions, who will be playing in the US Open men's and women's main draw next week, won their first round matches, with neither pair seeded this week.

Kalamazoo champions Adhithya Ganesan and Alexander Frusina defeated Brockett and Theo Papamalamis of France 6-1, 5-7, 10-8, while San Diego champions Kate Fakih and Olivia Center beat Taylor Goetz and Leena Friedman 6-2, 6-2.

Both teams told me they were not quite grasping the reality of playing in the main draw of the US Open, but are happy to have this event to help them prepare.

Second round singles matches begin at 9 a.m., with the completion of the first round of doubles to follow. Frances Tiafoe will again train on Stadium court Tuesday morning; Monday he hit with another JTCC alum, Michigan graduate Andrew Fenty.

The US Open qualifying begins Tuesday in New York, with both the finalists in the USTA National 18s Championships in action. 

Trevor Svajda will play No. 12 seed James Duckworth of Australia, in the first round of men's qualifying, while Katherine Hui will play Eugenie Bouchard of Canada in the first round of women's qualifying. 

John Parsons has the scoop on all the 2023 collegians and their matchups in the qualifying; with the men's here and the women's here.

ITF J300 College Park Begins Monday with Eight American Qualifiers; Tiafoe Practice Scheduled for JTCC Stadium Court; Gauff Wins Cincinnati Title

©Colette Lewis 2023--
College Park MD--

The final day of qualifying for the ITF J300 Wayne K. Curry Prince George's County International Junior Tennis Championships presented by Laurel Spring School meant another full day of tennis at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park.

Two of the boys qualifiers and all six of the girls qualifiers played two matches Sunday, and will be back on the courts for their first round singles on Monday, but fortunately, the weather cooperated, with temperatures in the 80s and little humidity.

Four of the six qualifiers in each gender are Americans: Aspen Schuman, Monika Ekstrand, Leena Friedman[4] and Sydney Jara, with Raphaelle Leroux[6] and Gian Octo of Canada the other two girls reaching the main draw.

The four US boys winning three qualifying matches over the weekend are: Mitchell Lee, Meecah Bigun[8], Nikita Filin[3] and Joseph Oyebog. The other two qualifiers are from Canada: Junghee You and Nicholas Arseneault.

A lucky loser also moved into the main draw, Canada's Connor Church[7], who lost to Lee 6-2, 6-3 in the final round of qualifying. Church replaces Cooper Woestendick, who withdrew with an illness.

Although no seeds will play until Tuesday, the schedule will again be packed, with all 32 first round singles matches; first round doubles matches are also expected to be played in the afternoon, with the sign-up closing Monday at noon.

There will be a special treat for those at JTCC Monday morning, with Frances Tiafoe, who grew up training there, returning for a practice session on Stadium Court. Tiafoe, currently No. 10 in the ATP rankings, is expected to work out after the match between wild card Cyrus Mahjoob and Nicolas Oliveira of Brazil, which begins at 9 a.m.

The welcome dinner for players, coaches and parents turned into a Cincinnati Masters 1000 watch party for the final between Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic, with the attention of most of the players focused squarely on the big screen TV in the banquet room. Once Djokovic won the match, 5-7, 7-6(7), 7-6(4), attention turned to the trivia game, which had teams identify top current ATP and WTA competitors from photos of their junior days playing the tournament. One of the players who was most quickly identified by all teams was Coco Gauff, who made the final here in 2017, when she was 13 years old.

Six years later, Gauff is a Masters 1000 champion, beating Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 6-4 in today's Cincinnati final. For more on Gauff's title, her second of the month, after winning the WTA 500 in Washington DC, see this article from the WTA website.

It was an all-American sweep of the women's titles in Cincinnati, with Taylor Townsend and Alycia Parks taking the doubles title with a 6-7(1), 6-4, 10-6 win over No. 3 seeds Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Ellen Perez. Townsend and Perez, playing together for the first time, beat four of the Top 5 seeded teams en route to the first Masters title for either.  For more, see this article from the WTA website.

Baylor to Host First NCAA Individual Championships in Fall Next Year; Update on US Open Men's Qualifying Wild Cards; Gauff Beats Swiatek to Reach Cincinnati Final; Top Qualifying Seeds Out at ITF J300 College Park

Baylor last hosted NCAAs in 2015

The venue for the second of the two NCAA individual championships in 2024 was selected recently, with Baylor hosting the event in the fall. 2024 will feature two NCAA individual championships, with Oklahoma State hosting as usual in May of 2024, after the team championships in Stillwater. Then in the first year of a two-year pilot program, the tournament will be moved to the fall. There will be no individual tournament in the spring of 2025, with Baylor hosting the team event only, then the individual championship will again be in the fall. Whether Georgia, the 2026 team championships host, can find a non-football date in the fall of 2025 to host the individual championships remains to be seen.

Other items on Division 1 tennis can be found in this NCAA Competition Oversight Committee report. 

As anticipated, the US Open qualifying wild cards situation has changed since the announcement Wednesday. Brandon Holt and Zachary Svajda moved into qualifying on their rankings after several withdrawals, with their wild cards going to Cannon Kingsley(Ohio State) and Michael Zheng(Columbia). Darwin Blanch declined his qualifying wild card(usually wild cards are not publicly revealed until they have been accepted), although he is still entered in the US Open Junior Championships.  Blanch's wild card will go to Quinn Vandecasteele(Oregon), who won the Edwardsville $25K in July. Maxime Cressy(UCLA) is next in the men's main draw, with the most recent men's main draw entry list here.

Caty McNally withdrew from the women's singles main draw, with Madison Brengle moving in. Taylor Townsend is next in. The most recent women's main draw entry list is here.

Coco Gauff[7] defeated WTA No. 1 Iga Swiatek in the semifinals of the WTA Masters 1000 in Cincinnati 7-6(2), 3-6, 6-4 today. It's the 19-year-old Gauff's first win over Swiatek in eight attempts; in her previous seven losses, she did not win a set, so it's an important victory for her. She'll face unseeded Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic in Sunday's final, after Muchova defeated No. 2 seed Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus 6-7(4), 6-3, 6-2.

At the Stanford 125 ATP Challenger, qualifier Emilio Nava lost in the final to No. 4 seed Constant Lestienne of France 7-6(4), 6-2. With that result, the 21-year-old Nava reaches his career-high in the ATP live rankings: 155. The unseeded pair of Diego Hidalgo(Florida) of Ecuador and Cristian Rodriguez of Colombia won the doubles title, beating top seed Julian Cash(Mississippi State/Oklahoma State) and Henry Patten(UNC-Asheville) of Great Britain 6-7(1), 6-4, 10-8.

The first two rounds of qualifying are not yet complete at the ITF J300 in College Park Maryland, with two boys and 11 girls second round matches still remaining, but both of the No. 1 seeds are out.

Mitchell Lee defeated top seed Thanaphat Boosarawongse of Thailand 7-6(5), 4-6, 10-7 in the second round, and plays No. 7 seed Connor Church of Canada in the final round of qualifying Sunday. 

In the only girls second round qualifying match completed, rising Harvard freshman Stephanie Yakhoff defeated No. 1 seed Riley Crowder 6-4, 7-5. Yakhoff will play the winner of the second round match between Aspen Schuman and Thea Frodin Sunday for a place in the main draw.

Kalamazoo 18s Video, My Recap of Tien's Second Straight Title, Ganesan and Frusina's Doubles Championship; Tennis Recruiting Network Reviews Ngounoue's 18s Title in San Diego; ITF J300 in College Park Wild Cards, Qualifying Begins Saturday

My recap of Learner Tien's defense of his USTA National 18s title is up today at the Tennis Recruiting Network, along with a look at the unexpected doubles championship for No. 7 seeds Adhithya Ganesan and Alexander Frusina, who were playing together for the first time. The top seed in singles also won in San Diego, with Clervie Ngounoue adding to her great summer results, which include her Wimbledon girls title and a WTA Top 40 win at the WTA 500 qualifying in Washington DC. While Ganesan and Frusina were unanticipated champions, the San Diego winners were unseeded UCLA recruits: Kate Fakih and Olivia Center. Center did not even make the singles field, but will be playing in the main draw of women's doubles at the US Open. Rhiannon Potkey has all the San Diego 18s details at the Tennis Recruiting Network.

I haven't had much time to relax after 10 days covering Kalamazoo, but I'm off to Maryland for the Wayne K. Curry Prince George's County International Junior Tennis Championships presented by Laurel Spring School, more succinctly known as the ITF J300 College Park. I've covered this event at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in person every year it has been held since 2014, and it is starting to develop quite a history. For a list of past champions, see the tournament page on the JTCC website.

The qualifying draws are up, with two rounds on Saturday. I hope to be there in time for the final round of qualifying Sunday. With the reduced draw size (from 64 to 48) this year, the qualifying fields are stronger than usual and completely filled.

The main draw wild cards:

Boys:

Cyrus Mahjoob

Stiles Brockett

Kase Schinnerer

Lachlan Gaskell

Jagger Leach

Calvin Baierl

With Cooper Woestendick in the main draw on his ITF junior ranking and the wild cards for Leach and Gaskell, the top 3 finishers in the Kalamazoo 16s division last week will be playing College Park, beginning Monday.

Girls:

Riley Rhodes 

Shivaani Selvan 

Trinetra Vijayakumar

Kristina Penickova

Annika Penickova 

Anita Tu

Kalamazoo 16s Video, My Recap of Woestendick's Boys 16s Title, Patrick and Kalinin's Doubles Championship; Tennis Recruiting Network Reviews 13-Year-Old Lyutova's Run to G16s Title in San Diego

My Tennis Recruiting Network article on the USTA National Boys 16s Championships is up today, with a review of both the singles and doubles tournaments. 

Rhiannon Potkey wrote the Tennis Recruiting Network article on Christina Lyutova's 16s title in San Diego, and it in, Lyutova admits she didn't know she would receive a main draw wild card into the US Open Junior Championships until Billie Jean King mentioned it during the trophy presentation. 

Lyutova, at age 13, has only been eligible to compete on the ITF circuit for a few months, and has only played one ITF Junior Circuit tournament, losing in the third round of the Las Vegas J60 in March. She will be the youngest player in the US Open Junior field; Hannah Klugman of Great Britain is the only 14-year-old in the junior main draw.

Both are protagonists in my article on the 2022 Junior Orange Bowl finals, where Klugman was upset in the final by Adelina Lachinova of Latvia, and Lyutova came from 4-1 down in the third to beat Yeri Hong of Korea. 

Highlights of the 16s boys final between Cooper Woestendick and Lachlan Gaskell are below. The girls 16s final can be viewed on the Cracked Racquets YouTube Channel's August 12th session; the final begins at the 45-minute mark.