US Open National Playoff Underway, Sonia Hahn To UTRGV, More Schedules Released, PlaySight adding more schools

The US Open National Playoff got underway today in New Haven with three of the four men's seeds and two of the four women's seeds advancing to the quarterfinals. The men's third seed Eric Quigley (Kentucky '12) was knocked off by UCLA senior Gage Brymer in two tiebreak sets while both the second and fourth seeds, Evan King and Jose Statham, came back from a set down to win in three sets. The top seed Nick Meister (UCLA '12) won the most lopsided match of the day 6-1, 6-1 over Philip Major.

The women's top seed Ayaka Okuno, who spent a semester at Georgia in 2013, was knocked off in straight sets by Sophie Chang while the fourth seed Ashley Weinhold lost in three-sets to North Carolina freshman Sara Daavettila. There was a Universal Tennis Rating upset as Eva Raszkiewicz rolled over Fernanda Contreras 6-3, 6-1 - Raszkiewicz's UTR was 1.52 lower but that didn't seem to bother her at all. All the results are listed in the table down below (two tabs) along with the quarterfinal matchups.

Mmoh Wins Big in Kzoo & Titles Galore on the Pro Circuit

Michael Mmoh came into this year's USTA Boys 18 National Championships as the top seed and he definitely lived up to the billing. Mmoh only needed about 90 minutes to win the best of five sets final over the No. 7 seed Vasil Kirkov 6-1, 6-2, 6-3. Mmoh only lost 35 games in seven matches and didn't drop a set all week. Colette Lewis has all the quotes from today's winners over at ZooTennis.  

Mmoh and Kirkov To Meet in Zoo Finals (Tale of the Tape), McNally/Wolf Win Zoo Dubs, Pro Circuit Update

The Kalamazoo Boys 18 singles final is set and it will match up the top seed Michael Mmoh and the seventh seed Vasil Kirkov. Mmoh cruised into the finals with a 6-2, 6-1 win over Trent Bryde while Vasil Kirkov came back from a 4-0 first set deficit to win 12 straight games to defeat Zeke Clark 6-4, 6-0.

Cincinnati's John McNally and JJ Wolf, the fourth seed, won the Boys 18 doubles title with a 6-2, 6-3 win over unseeded Sean Sculley and Nick Stachowiak. McNally and Wolf earned a main draw wild card into this year's US Open with the win.

Four Remain In Kalamazoo

The top seed Michael Mmoh cruised into the semifinals in Kalamazoo but none of the other top four seeds were as fortunate. The third seed JJ Wolf was knocked out on Wednesday in a third set tiebreak and on Thursday so was the second seed John McNally. Tampa's Vasil Kirkov managed to come back from a set down to outlast the 2017 Ohio State commit McNally in the only quarterfinal match to go three sets. Illinois commit Zeke Clark and Trent Bryde (#4 HS Class of '18) both won in straight sets as well and in fact both of those guys and Mmoh have yet to drop a set all week

Down to the Final 8 in Kalamazoo

It took almost almost a week but a top eight seed finally went down on Wednesday afternoon in Kalamazoo. In the only match of the day that went three sets it was [26] Timothy Sah upsetting [3] JJ Wolf 3-6, 6-2, 7-6(2). According to Colette Lewis's recap at ZooTennis, Wolf served for the match up 6-5 in the third but he wasn't able to close the door and Sah marched on through to score the upset. Colette has quotes from both Sah and Gianni Ross with the latter winning in straight sets despite an upset stomach.

Kalamazoo Round 4 Results/Round 5 Schedule

The higher seeds continued to win on Tuesday with 14 of the day's 16 winners being the higher ranked of the two competitors. [29] Alafia Ayeni pulled off a seeding upset over [16] Alexander Brown 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 but Ayeni was the higher rated player in just about every other category (TRN Class Ranking, UTR, ITF Jr, ATP) coming into the match.  The other seeding upset came when [26] Timothy Sah ousted [13] Richard Ciamarra 2-6, 6-1, 6-1. Both of these two were pretty evenly matched with a just a .15 UTR difference so this was a toss-up going in.

Kalamazoo - Round 3 Results/Round 4 Schedule

Seeded players had a great day on Monday with 24 of 25 seeds moving on to the fourth round with the 15th seed William Genesen the only seeded loser. 24 of the 32 third round matches finished in straight sets with many winning rather convincingly. Full results from Monday are available here and on my spreadsheet under the 3rd round tab and below are the number of games that the winners dropped.

Game Dropped:
0 - [14] Austin Huang
1 - [1] Michael Mmoh, [3] JJ Wolf
2 - [6] Zeke Clark, [8] Trent Bryde, [30] Patrick Kypson

Kalamazoo Nationals, Futures Update

All the top seeds took the court today in Kalamazoo for the second round of the Boys 18 National Championships and for the most part they had very little trouble. Each of the top 22 seeds won with 19 of them winning in straight sets however 6 of the bottom 10 were knocked out. Below were the seeded losers with college commitments listed in parenthesis.

Seeded Upsets
Aleksandar Kovacevic (Illinois) def. [23] Matthew Lord 6-7(3), 6-0, 6-2
John Carlin def. [24] Ryan Seggerman 2-6, 6-3, 6-1
Robert Krill (Wisconsin) def. [25] Jason Lui (Columbia) 6-3, 4-6, 6-1
Kristopher Ortega (Illinois) def. [28] Maxwell Freeman 6-4, 6-1
Payton Holden (Princeton) def. [31] Brenden Volk (Northwestern) 6-1, 6-0
Galen Lee (Harvard) def. [32] Casey Ross 6-2, 6-3

Assistant Coaching News, Transfers, Kalamazoo, Futures Update

New Oklahoma women's coach Audra Cohen announced the hiring of Amy Sargeant as the Sooners new assistant coach. Sargeant played at Florida State from 2010 to 2013 and was the assistant coach at New Mexico last season. OU's previous assistant Vincent "Boomer" Saia took a job with the Vanderbilt women's program a few days ago but I haven't seen an official release yet from the school.

Kalamazoo National Championships - Breakdown of the Boys 18 Field

We are just two days away from the start of the 2016 USTA Boys National Championships so just as I did last year I thought I'd give everyone a little more background on the field in the 18s division. For many of these guys this will be the end of their junior career with college on the immediate horizon. One of the most interesting things about this tournament is the fact that the winner gets a main draw wild card into the US Open so you have guys that have already turned pro that come back to play for that coveted prize.

All rounds up through the semifinals are best of three sets but the finals are best of five sets. Frances Tiafoe won it last year defeating Stefan Kozlov 6-2, 6-4, 4-6, 4-6, 6-4.

Kalamazoo College's Stowe Stadium and Western Michigan's Sorenson Tennis Courts will host the event with the two sites separated by just 1.6 miles.

Zoo Boys 18 Semis & Breakdown of the Final Participants

The Boys 18 National Championship and main draw wild card into the US Open will come down to #1 Frances Tiafoe and #3 Stefan Kozlov after each won their semifinal matches in straight sets.

Props goes out to TennisRecruiting.Net's forecasting model for correctly predicting the finals before the tournament started.  TRN shows Tiafoe as a slight favorite in the finals with a 53% chance of winning but that's a pretty slim margin.

Boys 18 Semifinal Results:
#1 Frances Tiafoe def. #4 Tommy Paul 6-3, 6-2
#3 Stefan Kozlov def. #2 Taylor Fritz 7-6(3), 6-3

Zoo Boys 18 - Quarterfinal Results

The Boys 18 draw in Kalamazoo is down to the final 4 and wouldn't you know it but the 4 remaining guys are seeded 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Neither of Friday's matches were very close in terms of score with both Stefan Kozlov and Taylor Fritz winning in straight sets while both of Thursday's matches were much closer with Tommy Paul needing 3 sets to beat Alex Rybakov and Frances Tiafoe getting past Reilly Opelka in 2 tight sets.

Zoo Boys 18 - Round 5 Results

It was a pretty straightforward Round of 16 in Kalamazoo on Wednesday as the higher seed in the Boys 18 draw won each of the 8 matches with 6 of those going in straight sets.

#5 Michael Mmoh (2016 Pro) was the only high seed that had to come back from a set down as he dispatched #20 John McNally (2017 uncommitted) 4-6, 6-4, 6-4.

#12 Eduardo Nava (2015 uncommitted) had the shortest match of the day as his opponent #22 Brandon Holt (2016 USC commit) retired with a hamstring injury after just 3 games were completed.

Zoo Boys 18 - Round 4 Results

The picture is become clearer and clearer in Kalamazoo after another day of results are in the books. There weren't any big upsets on Tuesday though the scores that probably stuck out the most were in the Genender/Kirkov and Paul/Ross matches.

Michael Genender (2015 Stanford commit) rolled over #28 Vasil Kirkov (2018 uncommitted) 6-2, 6-1.  Both are TRN Blue Chips with UTRs within .05 of each other so you'd have thought this would have been a tight match but the scoreline tells a different story.

#4 Tommy Paul (2015 Professional) got pushed by #19 Gianni Ross (2017 uncommitted) before pulling away in the 3rd set for a 6-7(6), 7-6(2), 6-0 win. Paul is a TRN Blue Chip with a 15.23 UTR while Ross is a TRN Blue Chip with a 13.88 UTR.

Zoo Boys 18 - Round 3 Results

After a day off the USTA Boys 18 Nationals resumed play with 3rd round action and while 21 seeds advanced there were 3 that got upset.

The seeded losers were:

• #18 Spencer Furman lost to Alexander Lebedev 2-6, 6-1, 6-2.  Levedev (2015 Notre Dame commit) is a TRN 5-star with a 12.81 UTR while Furman (2016 uncommitted) is a TRN Blue Chip with a 13.92 UTR.
• #17 Nick Stachowiak lost to Ben VanDixhorn 6-4, 6-1. VanDixhorn (2015 Northwestern commit) is a TRN 4-star with a 12.89 UTR while Stachowiak (2016 Duke commit) is a TRN Blue Chip with a 13.90 UTR.
• #31 Jacob Brumm lost to Vincent Rettke 6-2, 6-1. Rettke (2016 uncommitted) is a TRN 4-star with a 12.22 UTR while Brumm (2017 uncommitted) is a TRN Blue Chip with a 13.49 UTR.

Zoo - Round 2 Results

Day 2 of the USTA Boys 18 National Championship in Kalamazoo is in the books with 24 of the top 32 seeds moving on to Day 3.

4 of the top 16 seeds were upset with 2 of those being top 10 seeds.  Below are the 8 seeds to lose though a few wouldn't be considered upsets based off TRN and UTR info.

Zoo - Round 1 Results

All the seeds had 1st round byes but there were some upsets on the opening day.  Below were the 4 Universal Tennis upsets, which occur when the difference in rating is more than 1.0, and the 4 biggest upsets per TennisRecruiting.Net based off their ranking system.

UTR Upsets:
Sean Burnette (11.95) def. Oliver Sec (13.47) 6-3, 3-6, 6-1
Jacob Wareti (11.36) def. Nikolai Parodi (12.55) 7-6(2), 6-3
Ryland McDermott (11.65) def. Payam Ahmadi (12.82) 2-6, 6-1, 6-3
Alex Ross (12.29) def. Blaine Boyden (13.77) 6-1, 7-5

TR.Net Biggest Upsets - chance of winning in ( ):
Lorenzo Rollhauser (11%) def. Adrian Chamdani 2-6, 6-1, 6-0
Sean Burnette (9%) def. Oliver Sec 6-3, 3-6, 6-1
Ryland McDermott (8%) def. Payam Ahmadi 2-6, 6-1, 6-3
Jason Kerst (7%) def. Joshua Sheehy 6-2, 6-4

Time For The Zoo

It's late July/early August so that means it's time for the Zoo as the USTA National Championships get started in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  Play gets underway Friday morning at 8am at both Kalamazoo College and Western Michigan University.

Here is the Day 1 schedule of play and the tournament's host site which includes all schedules, results, and profiles. If you want to follow the tournament throughout the next week you also need to follow Colette Lewis on Twitter and check out her site, Zoo Tennis.

A few years ago when I was writing for a different site I did a breakdown of the Boys 18 singles draw where I listed each player's hometown, high school graduation class, college commitment/interests, Tennis Recruiting.Net star level, and Universal Tennis Rating. It takes some time but I decided to do it again this year to give everyone, including me, a better understanding of who these guys are and where they are heading.