At The Open With Marcia Frost...

Tuesday, September 7th
Junior Championships, Day Three

There was trouble for the boys today as many struggled to hold their place in the draw and a few were unable to do so as the third day of the US Open Junior Championships came to a close.

In his quest for the Grand Slam, top-seeded Gael Monfils is hitting bumps in the road. In the first round it was a three-setter against Remko de Rijke and today it was American Phillip Simmonds who stretched the Frenchman to the limit. Hard-hitting Phillip pushed Gael to 7-5,0-6,6-2. It's not going to be easy to achieve that fourth Major if Gael's matches continue like this.

Another player who has struggled the last few days is Scott Oudsema. Seeded eleventh in the singles draw and occupying the top of the doubles draw, Scott has been having a tough time here. First he was pushed to three sets by Sergei Bubka and today he barely got by Tom Rushby of Great Britain, 6-4,7-5. In between there was a tough doubles match with partner Brendan Evans for the two-time Australian Open doubles champion (with a Wimbledon title in between). Hopefully Scott will rest up and be ready for his singles match against No. 8 Mihail Zverev.

Three of the boys seeds were not able to survive today. Roland Garros finalist Alex Kuznetsov fell to Great Britain's Miles Kasiri.. After losing the first set, 6-4, Alex was up 5-3 in the second, but he couldn't hold and before he knew it he was facing a tie-breaker. For every winner the American hit, Miles came back with another and took the breaker 7-5. Another American was having a much better day. Wildcard Timothy Smyczeck shocked No. 13 Karan Rastogi of India, 6-1,6-3. Karan couldn't get anything past the relaxed Timothy that was not bothered by the hype of the Grand Slam event. The last upset of the day was qualifier Evgeniy Kirillov of Russia's 6-4,6-1 win over Fabio Fognini of Italy, the fifteenth seed.

The girls, on the other hand, held seeding today with few problems. The only three-setter was between Agnes Szavay and Yaroslava Shvedova. The thirteenth-seeded Agnes prevailed at 7-6(7),2-6,6-1. Julia Cohen, who has long been the top American in the ITF World Rankings, fell today to sixth-seeded Yung-Jan Chan of China, 6-1,6-1. (Julia was not seeded since she has not been playing ITF events recently and her ranking dropped.)

Doubles matches went on today without any surprises. Top seeds in both draws advanced with the most exciting of those matches between American wildcards Dylan Arnould and Jesse Levine against Kevin Anderson and Fritz Wolmarans. It looked like Dylan and Jesse had it wrapped up when their opponents came back and took it 7-5 in the third.

There are some great match-ups on the schedule for tomorrow. Among them I'm looking forward to University of Illinois player GD Jones vs. No. 2 Andreas Beck; No. 16 Aleksandra Wozniak vs. still 14 year old Alexa Glatch; and Americans Timothy Neilly vs. No. 10 Scoville Jenkins.

Dylan Arnold

Boys Singles Draw     Boys Doubles Draw

Girls Singles Draw     Girls Doubles Draw

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FROM THE 2004 US OPEN