NCAA Championship Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships

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Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - ColoradoTree - 05-20-2019

The team tournament may be done, but several of our players aren't. The NCAA women's singles tournament starts today, and doubles starts tomorrow, though our players get later start times to give them at least a little rest. Gordon, Lord, and Arbuthnott represent Stanford in the singles tournament, while Lampl/Yee and Arbuthnott/Gordon are in the doubles tournament.

Singles bracket: https://www.ustanationalcampus.com/content/dam/nationalcampus/pdf/WomensSinglesBracket.pdf
Doubles bracket: https://www.ustanationalcampus.com/content/dam/nationalcampus/pdf/WomensDoublesBracket.pdf

This will be the last matches Lord, Lampl, and Yee ever play for Stanford, so there could be some extra motivation there, despite the emotional high of winning yesterday.

Singles

First Round, Monday, May 20:

1:00pm: #29 Lord vs. #77 Paola Delgado (VCU)
1:00pm: #24 Gordon vs. #5 Makenna Jones (UNC)
1:00pm: #44 Arbuthnott vs. #27 Justina Mikluskyte (Kentucky)

Not exactly the luckiest draw for Gordon, but on the bright side, she knows Makenna's game well enough by now, and she just beat her a couple days ago. If Gordon wins, she'll get the winner between #33 Meible Chi (Duke) and #45 Jada Hart (UCLA).

Arbuthnott's first match is manageable, but a potential second round match against either #3 Kate Fahey of Michigan or #20 Sara Daavettila of UNC looms.

I like Lord's chances of making the Round of 16 best, as I'd favor her in the first match, and the second match will be against the winner of UW's Stacey Fung and Syracuse's Gabriela Knutson. (I assume Knutson has adequately rested whatever was giving her trouble in the second round against us, though.)

A reminder: because none of our players is seeded, they have work to do to garner All-American status for the season. You get that by being a top 16 seed in the singles tournament, by making the Round of 16 in the tournament, or by being in the Top 20 of the final rankings. After wins over Knutson and Jones, I like Gordon's chances to get into the Top 20, but better to leave nothing to chance. Lord has a shot at that, too, but again, why risk it? Arbuthnott will have to make the Round of 16 to qualify.

Doubles

First Round, Tuesday, May 21:

TBD: Lampl/Yee vs. #6 Khmelnitckaia/Koch (Kansas)
TBD: Arbuthnott/Gordon vs. #2 Graham/Aney (UNC)

Well, they didn't do us any favors, did they? FYI, Lampl/Yee beat Graham/Aney on Saturday, but the Kansas pair beat them 6-2 in the Super Regional.

Doubles is a 32-team tournament, and to lock up All-American status, you need to either be a top eight seed in the doubles tournament, reach the quarterfinals of the doubles tournament, or finish in the Top 10 of the final rankings. I wouldn't count on the last one for either pair, so they each need to win a couple matches.

How do I watch?

Live scoring should be here: http://mis.smtinternetservices.com/ncaachamps/
And when it's not on the Tennis Channel, you can stream the matches here: https://www.ustanationalcampus.com/en/home/watch.html

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - ColoradoTree - 05-20-2019

It's always tough to come back the next day and switch gears from a team triumph to thinking only about yourself again. You just won the thing you came here for, and now you're playing some extra matches where the end goal (an individual title) isn't the thing you've been fighting so hard to accomplish.

There were only a couple of withdrawals, so they didn't get as far down the list as Lampl's 6th alternate spot. A shame there aren't a handful of wild cards for seniors with great careers like hers. If Lampl had played for most other teams, she'd be #1 or #2, and her ranking would be high enough to get her in, but because she plays the other teams' threes instead of their ones or twos, regular-season wins don't move the needle enough. (Counterpoint: when she's had the opportunity to compete against top players in fall tournaments, she hasn't delivered. Arbuthnott played an even easier regular-season schedule than Lampl did, but because Emily took advantage of her tournament opportunities, she got her ranking high enough to be playing today.)

There's a Stanford connection to most matches in the first round, whether we played that team in the regular season or at NCAAs, or there was an individual matchup at a fall tournament. But in terms of what might most directly affect our players in the next couple of days, UW's Stacey Fung beat Syracuse's Gabriela Knutson 6-2, 6-2, so perhaps Knutson isn't entirely healthy yet. In any event, as good as Fung is (she was inside the Top 15 most of the 2018 season), Lord has it in her to beat her.

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - ColoradoTree - 05-20-2019

Seeds are having a rough go of it, with seven of the ten seeds to have completed their matches losing:

* Stacey Fung (UW) def. (9-16) Gabriela Knutson (SYR) 6-2, 6-2
* Asuka Kawai (ILL) def. (9-16) Maria Mateas (Duke) 3-6, 6-2, 6-3
* Anna Turati (TEX) def. (8) Sophie Whittle (Gonzaga) 6-2, 7-6
* Chiara Lommer (MICH) def. (4) Ingrid Gamarra Martins (SCAR) 6-3, 6-3
* Solymar Colling (San Diego) def. (9-16) Eden Richardson (LSU), 5-7, 6-3, 7-5 (recall that Gordon lost to Colling in a January tournament in what was a shock at the time, but Colling has built on that)
* Sara Daavettila (UNC) def. (3) Kate Fahey (MICH), 6-3, 4-6, 6-4
* Felicity Maltby (TTU) def. (9-16) Christina Rosca (VAN), 6-2, 7-5

For their part, (1) Estela Perez-Somarriba (MIA), (7) Alexa Graham (UNC), and (9-16) Anna Rogers (N.C. State) have booked wins.

A good start for the Pac-12, as in addition to Fung, we got first-round wins from UCLA's Jada Hart and Elysia Bolton (Hart by 6-1, 6-1 over #33 Meible Chi of Duke, and Bolton by 6-1, 6-3 over #30 McCartney Kessler of Florida), WSU's Michaela Bayerlova (6-4, 6-3 over #55 Lauren Proctor of Winthrop), and Cal's Rosenqvist (6-0, 6-2 over #40 Valeriya Zeleva of UCF). Cal's Olivia Hauger is the only Pac-12 player to lose so far.

Melissa Lord's match is getting started now on Court 11. Looks like she was broken to start things off but broke right back. Here's a link if you want to watch: https://www.ustanationalcampus.com/en/home/watch.html

After getting broken to open the match, Lord has won four straight to go up 4-1.

Lord takes the first set 6-2, and will serve to open the second. Arbuthnott is up next on Court 8, and Gordon is up next on Court 12. If Arbuthnott wins, she'll get UNC's Sara Daavettila. If Gordon wins, she'll get UCLA's Jada Hart.

Melissa making some sloppy errors now, so I wonder how tired she is, both mentally and physically. She was broken to go down 1-2 but broke back at love.

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - ColoradoTree - 05-20-2019

Lord leads Delgado 6-2, 3-4 (down a break)
Gordon leads Jones 4-0 (just broke on a big deciding point)
Arbuthnott tied 2-2 (was up a break, but gave it back)

Lord tied 6-2, 3-6, 1-1
Gordon leads 5-2
Arbuthnott leads 4-3 (up a break, but neither player seems keen on holding serve today)

Everything had been going Gordon's way, but Jones holding from 0-5, 0-40 down seems to have given her some life, and she just broke Gordon to get to 2-5. Jones to serve next.

Lord trails 6-2, 3-6, 1-2 (on serve)
Gordon leads 6-2, 0-0
Arbuthnott leads 6-3, 0-0

Jones led 40-15 in that last game, but Gordon wins three straight return points to take the set.

Lord trails 6-2, 3-6, 1-3 (running out of steam....)
Gordon leads 6-2, 1-0 (on serve)
Arbuthnott leads 6-3, 1-0 (on serve)

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - ColoradoTree - 05-20-2019

Lord loses 6-4 in the third, and her Stanford career is at an end.

But Gordon turns on the jets and beats Jones 6-2, 6-1. Arburthnott dropped her second set 6-4 and is starting the third now.

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - oldalum - 05-20-2019

(05-20-2019, 03:51 PM)ColoradoTree Wrote: Lord loses 6-4 in the third, and her Stanford career is at an end.

She looked tired to me, resting her racket on the ground while waiting to receive serve.

In the past it's been very hard to do well in singles following a team competition run to the championship match, and that was when there was a day of rest between the quarterfinals and the semis. The only player I can remember to have done it recently is Nicole Gibbs?

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - ColoradoTree - 05-20-2019

Nice job by Arbuthnott to come back in the third. She was down 4-1, but now leads 5-4.

Of course, then she loses two in a row, and her opponent will serve for the match, 6-5 in the third.

Well, at least Emily still has doubles.

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - ColoradoTree - 05-21-2019

Tuesday, May 21 schedule:

Singles, Round of 32

9:00am: Gordon vs. #45 Jada Hart (UCLA)

Doubles, Round of 32

9:30am: Lampl/Yee vs. #6 Khmelnitckaia/Koch (Kansas)
5:00pm: Arbuthnott/Gordon vs. #2 Graham/Aney (UNC)

**

Beat Jada Hart and Gordon's an All-American in singles again. Simple as that.

Of course, beating Hart isn't the simple thing. In the regular-season road match at UCLA, Gordon lost 6-2, 6-3, but reversed that for the Pac-12 final, winning that match 6-4, 6-4 (which is more what I expected the first match). Hart's UTR going into the quarterfinals was 11.58, while Gordon's was 11.72, so by that measure, Gordon should be considered a very slight favorite. But Gordon is playing awfully well right now, and when she's on the top of her game, she has a gear that I don't think Hart can match. But that matchup isn't ideal from a style of play perspective, so getting on top of Hart early will be key. And Gordon doesn't always find that gear, of course.

Hart is also either playing extremely well, or she faced an opponent too exhausted or injured to put up her best fight. Because Duke's Meible Chi is good, and Hart beat her 6-1, 6-1. (Chi beat #11 Carla Touly of Florida State twice this year, crushed #21 Chiara Lommer of Michigan, and was about to beat #7 Alexa Graham of UNC in the ACC tournament--up 4-0 in the third--when the match was clinched.)

The NCAA singles tournament is a beautiful mess like that. So many surprising results. I mean, Gordon is good, don't get me wrong, but 6-2, 6-1 over the #5 player in the country good? Obviously there's a mix of Gordon playing well and finding motivation, and Jones struggling and feeling disappointed over the end to the season.

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - ColoradoTree - 05-21-2019

Gordon's match is getting started on Court 3 now, if you're of a mind to watch: https://www.ustanationalcampus.com/en/home/watch.html

Something is wrong with the Court 3 feed for me, though. It's showing old video of a men's match, not what's happening live. If you check out Court 4, you can see Hart and Gordon playing on 3, though, so it's happening. In any event, Gordon is down a quick break, 0-2.

Lampl/Yee are scheduled to be on Court 11, starting in about 15 minutes.

Gordon trails 1-4. Come on, Michaela!

Got back on serve, down 3-4, but was promptly broken again. Hart served for the first set, but Michaela broke right back on deuce point to get to 4-5. She'll serve next to stay in it.

Over on Court 11, Lampl/Yee are quickly down a double break at 1-4. Yeesh. Luckily, you play best of three sets in these matches (though you may do a match tiebreaker for the third until the final rounds--not positive on that), so they have time to gather themselves, unlike in dual match play when it can be over in a blink of an eye.

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - ColoradoTree - 05-21-2019

In December, Gordon beat Duke's Kelly Chen twice, both in three sets, on her way to winning the USTA Blizzard Wild Card Challenge. Chen just became an All-American, beating #10 Anna Rogers (NC State) in three sets to reach the Round of 16 after she handled Pepperdine's Jessica Failla in the first round.

In March, Gordon crushed Hawaii's Petra Melounova, 6-1, 6-2. Melounova is now an All-American, having defeated #60 Jessica Golovin (LSU) in three sets in the first round, and then handling #47 Chiara Lommer (Michigan) 6-4, 6-1 in the second round.

By my count, Gordon has now played 13 matches against players who have secured All-American status this year, and she has gone 7-6 in those matches.

Other players she's beaten this season that have a chance to become All-Americans today:

Michaela Bayerlova (WSU) (1-0)
Jada Hart (UCLA) (1-1) -- this would be a bad result, of course!
Ashley Lahey (Pepperdine) (1-0)
Julia Rosenqvist (Cal) (1-0)
Bianca Turati (Texas) (1-0)
Brienne Minor (Michigan) (1-0)

Players who have defeated her this season and have a chance to secure All-American status today:

Solymar Colling (San Diego) (0-1)
Jada Hart (UCLA) (1-1) -- again, we don't want this!

And Hart breaks Gordon to take the first set 6-4. Sigh. Over on Court 11, Lampl/Yee are down 2-5 with Kansas serving for the set.

Gordon trails 4-6, 1-4
Lampl/Yee trail 2-6, 2-2

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - ColoradoTree - 05-21-2019

Michaela Gordon's singles season ends in disappointing fashion with a 6-4, 6-1 loss to UCLA's Jada Hart. She still has a shot at the Top 20 in the final singles rankings, which is the last route to being an All-American, so hopefully her two wins over Makenna Jones in the past week (plus the win over Knutson in the second round) get her there.

Meanwhile, Lampl/Yee took the second set 6-3, and they're playing a match tiebreaker to see who advances. Not going great so far, though, with Kansas leading 6-1.

Got it to 6-6! Come on! (I haven't seen on-court coaching for Stanford in this doubles match, FWIW. There has been a lot of it for Kansas.)

Lampl sends a return long and they lose the match tiebreaker 10-7. The Stanford careers for that great senior class are now all at an end.

Gordon has now played 17 matches against players who have secured All-American status this year, and she has gone 8-9 in those matches.

Arbuthnott/Gordon lose 6-2, 6-4 to UNC's Aney/Graham, and that wraps it up for Stanford women's tennis for the year. All that's left is a little suspense over whether Gordon will be in the Top 20 of the final ITA singles rankings, and become a two-time singles All-American.

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - ColoradoTree - 05-23-2019

Maybe I should have given Jada Hart more credit? She's through to the quarterfinals, and she just took the first set 6-4 off Georgia's Katarina Jokic and is up a break in the second.

FYI, North Carolina will have four singles All-Americans, as not only were #5 Makenna Jones and #7 Alexa Graham seeded, but Cameron Morra and Sara Daavettila made the Round of 16 (both Morra and Daavettila are in the quarterfinals, too). Georgia returns everyone next year, so they'll be very good, but returning four singles All-Americans like UNC is something that can't have happened too often, if ever.

North Carolina is going to be right back where they were this year, folks. And they return their top 4, and all 4 should be ranked in the preseason top 20. That's scary.

I'm just saying, don't be offended when Stanford is #3 to start the season when Georgia returns its entire lineup and UNC returns four players that good (plus their #6 and a couple of blue chip recruits).

Hart lost the second set to Jokic. She went up a break early in the third, but just like in the second, Jokic erased it. In other action, Duke's Kelly Chen beat UNC's Sara Daavettila to reach the semifinals. Only two seeds left in the women's draw, but they're the top two--#1 Estela Perez-Somarriba of Miami and #2 Jokic.

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - BostonCard - 05-23-2019

Seems to be proof that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, which is hard to do when The whole is a series of individual tennis matches, and yet here we are, with a national championship despite fewer all Americans than UNc.

BC

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - oldalum - 05-23-2019

Our players seem to play/compete better in team matches than individual ones. For example, against UNC's #1 doubles team, Lampl/Yee beat them in the team match and then lost to them in 2 sets in the doubles competition. I think they must feel extra motivation as well as confidence in the team setting.

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - ColoradoTree - 05-24-2019

(05-23-2019, 04:18 PM)oldalum Wrote: Our players seem to play/compete better in team matches than individual ones. For example, against UNC's #1 doubles team, Lampl/Yee beat them in the team match and then lost to them in 2 sets in the doubles competition. I think they must feel extra motivation as well as confidence in the team setting.

I think that's exactly right. And what a credit to Lele's coaching that is, really. Might not be the best thing for recruiting some of those top junior players who are deciding between pro tennis and college tennis, but we've still got Nicole Gibbs (peak of #68, now at #116) and Kristie Ahn (peak of #105, currently #173) out there as recent examples of where Stanford can take them in the pro ranks.

Winning the NCAA singles tournament isn't exactly a perfect predictor of pro success, too. For every Danielle Collins and Nicole Gibbs (both 2x NCAA singles champions; Collins is #33 and the current poster child of former NCAA players in the WTA), you have an Arianne Hartono (currently #663 on tour) and a Brienne Minor (came back to Michigan, pro tennis prospects seem dim). Jamie Loeb won NCAAs in 2015 and she's doing really well, relatively speaking: she's #238 with a peak ranking of #132.

It's really hard to make a living from tennis period, and while skipping college was obviously the right decision for players like the Williams sisters, Sloane Stephens, Madison Keys, and others, there are hundreds more young men and women who thought they were ready, flirted with the top 200, but never broke through and never made much money from tennis, and now don't have a college degree. (Or you don't have some or most of the credits you need, at least, in the case of someone like Gibbs or Zhao, who left after their junior years, or Laura Granville, who left after her sophomore year, completed her degree after her playing career was done, and is now the head coach at Princeton.)

Anyway, that's a tangent for another day, perhaps, but I think the fact that Lele gets the absolute most out of her players in a team setting is a credit to her and to the character of the people she recruits. Some players can translate that to individual success better than others, but it's pretty clear that no one else can offer the combination of NCAA success and a chance at pro success that Stanford does. And that's without even talking about the 40-year decision! Just from a pure athletic success standpoint, Stanford stands alone in women's tennis.

FYI, the women's singles semifinals are #1 Perez-Somarriba of Miami vs. UNC's #4, Cameron Morra and #2 Katarina Jokic vs. Duke's #3, Kelly Chen.

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - BostonCard - 05-24-2019

Didn’t we recently have a top junior who elected to go straight to the pros instead of coming to Stanford? Just curious, how is she doing?

BC

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - DenverCard - 05-24-2019

(05-24-2019, 09:14 PM)BostonCard Wrote: Didn’t we recently have a top junior who elected to go straight to the pros instead of coming to Stanford? Just curious, how is she doing?

BC

BC:
You piqued my curiosity, and I found this link:

https://tennis.life/2019/04/07/injury-nightmare-for-cici-bellis/

Certainly a reminder of the 40-year decision, although I believe she's from Atherton, so she's probably got a pretty good safety net.

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - ColoradoTree - 05-25-2019

Injury luck aside, Bellis was certainly ready to turn pro—when you’re good enough to be ranked in the top 40 when you’re 18, you’re ready.

Assuming she gets healthy soon, I imagine she’ll prove to us all that she made the right choice by going pro. She’s got the kind of talent to make millions more than she already has, so even with this injured stretch, I wouldn’t say yet that she made the wrong decision by forgoing Stanford.

FYI, I have to retract my statement that Georgia is returning its full lineup. Freshman Lourdes Carle, who played #3, has elected to turn pro. A bit of a surprise, but she must have felt she would develop faster on tour.

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - oldalum - 05-25-2019

(05-25-2019, 07:04 AM)ColoradoTree Wrote: Injury luck aside, Bellis was certainly ready to turn pro—when you’re good enough to be ranked in the top 40 when you’re 18, you’re ready.

Assuming she gets healthy soon, I imagine she’ll prove to us all that she made the right choice by going pro. She’s got the kind of talent to make millions more than she already has, so even with this injured stretch, I wouldn’t say yet that she made the wrong decision by forgoing Stanford.

Seems like the extra physical stress of practicing and playing tennis full time at a pro level was what tipped her over into injury. No way to know, but a year at Stanford, with time off for playing in some pro tournaments, might have eased her into it better. In the end, it didn't hurt us that she didn't come.

Bellis attributed the start of her injuries to playing against a super hard hitter on tour, which makes me more skeptical of Carle's chances as a pro. She could not handle Lampl's groundstrokes, but she's going to face hitters as strong or stronger than Lampl almost every match. Maybe college life just wasn't that good for her. Good luck!

RE: Women's Tennis: Singles and Doubles Championships - BostonCard - 05-25-2019

Quote:“There is no way I can do this anymore, but tennis is everything to me. I wouldn’t have done this if I didn’t love this sport,” she writes.

Given that statement, she made the right decision for her. Still, I worry about what happens if injuries and/or failure to develop mean that #40 becomes the high-water mark for her. If tennis is everything and then it isn’t... then what?

BC