INTERNATIONAL
NEWS
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US Open – SECOND DAY September 8 - The toppling of the top seed in the girls singles by American wild card Asia Muhammad was still a big talking point the following day. Muhammad is a player who likes to get to the net and has a mental toughness that is hard to overcome. French girl Kristina Mladenovic, who is the reigning Roland Garros junior champion and reached the Wimbledon finals in singles and doubles this year, lost in straight sets and left the court in tears. “I got a little tentative and she got a little more aggressive,” Muhammad said of the second set wobble where she gave up a two-break lead. “I just had to calm down and go back to being a little more aggressive. I started to make a little too many errors because I was too tense.” First round singles matches are due to be completed on Monday with Stephanie Cornish hoping to emulate the wins produced by Heather Watson and Laura Robson in their openers. While she battled hard, the 17 year-old Essex girl fell short, losing in two close sets to Yana Buchina from Russia, 6-4 7-6(9) but went on to win her doubles match later that afternoon. Six American girls moved through their first round encounters. Among them were 7th seeded Lauren Embree who defeated Paula Kania of Poland, 7-5 6-2 and the 16th seed Beatrice Capra’s 6-3 6-2 win over Russia’s Anna Arina Marenko. |
Grace Min overcame qualifier Juan Ting-Fei from Chinese Taipei 6-4 6-2; Nicole Gibbs defeated Poland’s Magda Linette 6-4 6-1; qualifier Courtney Dolehide took out Romania’s Cristina Dinu 6-0 4-6 6-4; and wild card Gail Brodsky dispatched Paraguay’s Veronica Cepeded Royg 7-5 7-5; and all will represent the United States in the second round. Another qualifier Noel Scott fell in straight sets to Hungary’s Zsofia Susanyi 6-4 6-0 to thwart an otherwise stellar day for Americans. The highest seeded girl to see action on the day was the third seeded Timea Babos of Hungary, who took down Elina Svitolina of Ukraine, 6-3 6-4. Elsewhere, the tenth seed Richel Hogenkamp from the Netherlands sandwiched a lost second set tiebreaker with 6-2 wins in the first and third against Argentina’s Paula Ormaechea, while Ulrikke Eikeri, seeded 15 from Norway got by the Belarussian Nataliya Pintusova, 6-2 6-1. In the boys singles Matthew Kandath, from New York state, two-handed his way into the second round with a 7-6(4) 7-6(4) victory over the 4th seed Liang-Chi Huang from Chinese Taipei. Both players won better than 60 percent of their service points, but Kandath, who hits both forehand and backhand with both hands on the racket, got the better of both tiebreakers by identical, 7-4 scores. Fellow American Alexander Domijan advanced in three sets to set up a second round match against 16-year-old Australian Bernard Tomic, who turned heads with a victory in the main draw at the Australian Open earlier this year. Raymond Sarmiento also proceeded to the second round, but other Americans were not so fortunate. Harry Fowler, Sekou Bangoura, Shane Vinsant, and Bjorn Fratangelo were all shown the door. |
Of that quartet, only Bangoura took his match to a third set, losing 6-3 4-6 6-0 to Alexandros Georgoudas of Germany. Other seeded players fell as well. Pierre-Hugues Herbert needed six match points to finish off the 9th seed Shuichi Sekiguchi while the 10th seed, Facundo Arguello from Argentina, dropped a three-setter to Christian Lindell. No 6 seed Yong-Kyu Lim from South Korea and No 8 seed Gianni Mina from France both moved through in straight sets. Cornish returned later to Court 16 and teamed up with Canada's Katarena Pallivets and extended her stay in New York with a 6-1 7-5 win over Russia's Polina Leykina and Anna Arina Marenko in a girls' doubles first round match. Cornish and Pallivets were at 5-5 with the Russians but broke Leykina's serve and the British girl served out for the match. Buchina knocked out Cornish earlier and teamed up with Heather Watson against Tunisia's Ons Jabeur and Zheng Sai-Sai, the 6th seeds, winning the first set 6-0 but then losing the second set 3-6 and being overhauled in the deciding champions tie-break 10-8. In the boys' doubles first round, Leicestershire's Ahmed El Menshawy joined forces with American Harry Fowler to defeat Slovak duo Filip Horansky and Jozef Kovalik 7-5 6-3. Both Robson and Watson resume their girls' singles campaigns on Tuesday. Robson, the 2008 junior Wimbledon champion, faces 7th seed Lauren Embree while the British girls’ number one, Watson, seeded 11th, facing the American qualifier Courtney Dolehide. |
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