Hey Tennis Friends!
There have been many changes this year to the USTA & ITF National Spring Championships, now named after its title sponsor: the ASICS Easter Bowl! I was there for the last few days of this weeklong event, to shoot some highlights and introduce you to the next generation of great players:
Here are the scores for the matches that I featured (seedings in parenthesis):
BOYS’ 16s SINGLES QUARTERFINAL
(3)Taylor Fritz d. (9)Victor Pham 6-1, 6-0
These fifteen year olds made a great showing by reaching the quarterfinals, all the way from a draw of 128. Pham never dropped a set, and only gave up 16 games on his run-up, as Fritz had a tough three-setter in his first round, and gave up a total of 25 games on his way to this match. On paper, Pham had the edge, however, Fritz was like a freight train, just plowing though his opponent, who could not come up with an answer for his dominating play.
GIRLS’ 18s SINGLES SEMIFINAL
(6)Tornado Ali Black d. (14)Louisa Chirico 7-6(5), 7-6(5)
Black was down 3-1 in the first set for the second consecutive match, but was able to battle back against a tough player, Chirico, in a match that was just short of three hours. Think about that for a moment . . . three hours to complete two sets! Both players had tough three-setters on their run-up matches, but still had plenty of fight to make this match close and entertaining.
Tennis Channel was also out there covering finals weekend of this event, and will air their program at the following times:
Sunday, May 19 at 12:30 pm ET / 9:30 am PT (Premiere)
Sunday, May 19 at 12:30 am ET (Monday morning) / 9:30 pm PT (Repeat)
Additional information in this report was provided by the ASICS Easter Bowl PR Press Aide, Steve Pratt.
Be sure to share GroundsPass.net with your other Tennis Friends using the social networking buttons, below.
Subscribe for FREE to this site, my Twitter feed, and/or friend me on FaceBook.
I’ll see you next time, with more tennis, . . . outside the lines!
– Marcus Tennis