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Saturday, June 23, 2012

Buchanan and Domijan in Futures Final Sunday; Doyle Aims for First Pro Circuit Title; Draws Posted for ITF Grade 1 Roehampton

All-Americans Chase Buchanan and Alex Domijan will meet on Sunday for the singles championships of the $10,000 Pro Circuit Futures tournament in Indian Harbour Beach, Florida. Buchanan, who just turned 21 and completed his eligibility at Ohio State last month, beat 18-year-old Christian Harrison in the semifinals 7-6(4), 6-4, while Domijan, the 20-year-old who recently completed his sophomore year at Virginia, defeated No. 6 seed Bjorn Fratangelo 4-6, 6-1, 6-1.  Neither Buchanan nor Domijan is seeded this week.

In their meetings as juniors, Buchanan had the upper hand, winning all three times they played in major ITF events, but in college competition, Domijan has a 2-0 record, winning twice over Buchanan in the 2011 dual match season, including in the semifinals of the NCAA team championships. Buchanan is seeking his second Pro Circuit singles title; his first came way back in 2008, when he won the Vero Beach Futures, which was also played on clay. Domijan is looking for his first Pro Circuit title. I have not tried to watch myself, but the USTA is advertising  live streaming for the tournament at the spacecoastsportstv site, which streamed the women's $50,000 tournament this spring.

Buchanan had beaten teammate Blaz Rola in the quarterfinals, and Florida Today published a lengthy story about their match Friday. In it, Rola reveals that he is not playing the fall college season, concentrating instead on Futures events in Europe, but is planning to return to Ohio State for the dual match season in 2013.

Complete draws can be found at the Pro Circuit results page.

At the women's $10,000 Pro Circuit event in Williamsburg, Va., Caroline Doyle keeps rolling along, reaching the final with a 6-1, 6-2 win over No. 5 seed Nika Kukharchuk of Russia. The 16-year-old Doyle, who had never qualified for the main draw of a Pro Circuit event in three tries and has no WTA ranking, dropped only one set in her three qualifying matches this week, and hasn't lost any sets in her four main draw wins.  She will attempt to end the winning streak of Vojislava Lukic of Serbia, who won the Bethany Beach $10,000 tournament last week as a qualifier, and is through to the finals this week on a special exemption. The 25-year-old has a collegiate connection according to her wikipedia page, but the reason for her long break from the game remains a mystery.

The complete draws can be found at the Pro Circuit results page.

The draws for the Grade 1 ITF in Roehampton, the warm-up for Wimbledon's junior championships, have been posted.  The most notable news is the appearance of Connor Farren, who told me back in April he didn't know if he would be able to play, due to a wrist injury, prior to Kalamazoo. Roehampton will be his first tournament since the Australian Open juniors back in January. Other American boys in the draw are Alexios Halebian, Stefan Kozlov, Mitchell Krueger(7), Mackenzie McDonald(14), Spencer Papa and Noah Rubin(13).

There are six US girls in the draw and four of them are seeded: Taylor Townsend(1), Sachia Vickery(4), Chalena Scholl(5) and Allie Kiick(8). Kyle McPhillips and Jennifer Brady are the unseeded US players. Christina Makarova was in the acceptances, but is not in the draw, and has not played a match in over a month.

The draws and schedule can be found on the home page of the LTA website.



4 comments:

tony said...

Fratangelo loses to Domijan 6-1 in the third this week. I know it's early, but maybe he jumped the gun on turning pro...

LoveTheGame said...

Mardy Fish lost fairly easily to Phil King in K-Zoo final a few years back. A few matches does not make a career. Tennis is a game of errors and losses. It's how you learn (or don't learn) from them that matter in the end. Both fratangelo and domijan had junior careers that would suggest they could be top 100 pros, so it's not a bad loss for Bjorn.

Austin said...

I checked this live streaming out, however, at least when I tried to watch it, there is no way to tell what the score is. You are just watching two people play tennis.

anon said...

When I watched, I saw 4 people playing dubs(also saw part of both semis). I had weak audio of chair umpire and someone panned the camera during changeovers to include scoreboard. "out" calls by linespeople were also audible. Video was better than most of college coverage this year. Finals Monday 9am Eastern--try it