USC & Cal Post Three Wins in Napa; Some Upsets in Newport; Seeds Roll at the Bonk

Tagged with: Duke James Bonk Invitational, Hall of Fame ITA Grass Court Invitational, Napa Valley Classic

The opening day of the Audi Napa Valley Classic was a good one for USC and Cal with their guys going a combined 6-2 in singles. Billy Griffith, JT Nishimura, and Bjorn Hoffmann were the three Bears to pick up wins while USC’s wins came from Jake DeVine, Thibault Forget, and Mateusz Smolicki. Oklahoma’s Aleksandre Bakshi, who transferred in from Texas A&M, spoiled the collegiate debut of Cal’s Jack Molloy with a straight set win while fellow Sooner Jochen Bertsch did the same to Texas A&M’s Juan Carlos Aguilar. The USTA’s High Performance Junior Team went 2-6 on the day with Axel Nefve and Jaycer Lyeons picking up wins while Nathan Han was edged 7-6 in the third by Texas A&M’s Valentin Vacherot. Full results from Friday are available at this link which also includes the UTRs of each player. 

 

The second annual Hall of Fame ITA Grass Court Invitational got underway on Friday in Newport with Georgia leading the way on the men’s side after going 3-1 in singles. Georgia junior Jan Zielinski edged Illinois senior Aron Hiltzik in a third set supertiebreak while sophomore Alex Phillips and senior Andy Martinez won in straight sets.

TCU went 2-2 with junior Alex Rybakov and freshman Alastair Gray only dropping a combined three games in their straight sets wins.

Columbia went 2-2 with sophomore Jackie Tang winning a third set supertiebreak over Illinois sophomore Aleks Kovacevic while freshman Jack Mingjie Lin won his match 1 and 1. 

 

 

North Carolina had the best showing on the women’s side with junior Jessie Aney, sophomore Alexa Graham, and freshman Alle Sanford picking up the wins while Sara Daavettila was upset in a third set supertiebreak by Princeton senior Katrine Steffensen. Florida went 2-1 on the day with Josie Kuhlman and Anna Danilina each winning while Princeton and LSU went 1-3. North Texas’s lone entry in the field, Maria Kononova, won her match in a third set supertiebreak over Princeton’s Gabriella Pollner. Full results from the day are available here and Saturday’s order of play is here. 

 

 

The opening day of the Duke James Bonk Invite saw the four seeds in the A1 singles flight and the top two seeds in the A2 singles flight advance to the men’s quarterfinals.

On the women’s side Duke’s Kelly Chen, Georgia Tech’s Ida Jarlskog and Victoria Flores, and LSU’s Elyse Lavender each won their collegiate debuts with Lavender defeating Duke’s top player from last year, Samantha Harris, in straight sets. Full results from Friday are available at these two links – men and women. 

I’ll continue to update draws for all the other events in my fall hub which is available to all College Tennis Today subscribers.