Wednesday night saw 2 upsets on Stadium Court. The most notable was Canadian wild card Felix ROUSSEL ranked 761 eliminating top seed Alvaro FRUTOS ALONSO from Paraguay, ranked 67 in the world. Do ratings mean anything at all? As we have mentioned in these pages ratings, while important, do not tell the whole story. Rankings are easy to track, determined by results in ITF sanctioned tournaments. But there is another methodology, the WTN (world tennis number) rating which takes into account quality of results by considering strength of opponents, point differentials, and other factors. But the WTN rating is more difficult to track and measure and must have a confidence level of at least 70, whatever that means. While FRUTOS had the best ITF ranking in the field, his WTN rating of 19.5 was the worst of the 24 players in the draw by Direct Acceptance, so perhaps he was bound to fall eventually. ROUSSEL’s WTN is 17.5. FRUTOS is also a clay court specialist and this was only his second hard court tournament. The other upset saw the Dutch player Stan PUT ranked 159 and with WTN 17.4 take out no. 6 seed American Marcel LATAK ranked 79 with WTN 14.5, a true surprise, sure to improve PUT’s rankings.
In a battle of similarly ranked Boys, Xavier MASSOTTE of Canada ranked 78 with WTN of 17.6 eliminated the tough Israeli Dan BRAND ranked 74 with WTN of 17.1 by the surprisingly easy score of 6-2, 6-1. Both players are very talented and somebody had to win, although fans expected a more competitive match result. Japanese player Takahiro KAWAGUCHI ranked 130 and with WTN of 17.4 eliminated Agassi RUSHER of USA ranked 91 with WTN of 16.1 in a very tough match by 7-6(7), 7-5. This part of the draw is very open since both seeded players in the bottom quarter had been eliminated in earlier rounds. In the last daylight Boys QF match, last night’s 2 heroes faced off: Felix ROUSSEL of Canada vs. Dutchman Stan PUT. In a 3 set thriller the Canadian finally pulled out the win by 5-7, 6-2, 7-5. It could have gone either way.
The last Boys QF match for Thursday will be featured as the second encounter of night play. Englishman Rhys LAWLOR, ranked 88, will square off against Frenchman Mathys DOMENC, ranked 75. The pairing is especially significant because these 2 players have the best WTN ratings of any other players in the field, 14.65 and 14.44 respectively. This will easily be the Boys match of the tournament so far.
In Girls QF action no. 2 seed Margaret SOHNS of USA ranked 79 bested Czech player Katerina ZAJICKOVA ranked 164 by 7-5, 6-4. Although this result was in straight sets, there are no easy matches at QF level. Another Czech girl, Klara BLAZKOVA was able to make the SF by ousting American Sara YE by 7-5 6-2. At 18 years old, Klara is one of the oldest girls in the draw. The other Girls QF played today was between Janae PRESTON of USA ranked 103 and Ofir MANHARD of Israel, only 14 years old, ranked 187. PRESTON with a WTN of 15.6 that is among the best in the field, has a solid, well grounded game and is a tough competitor. PRESTON prevailed 7-6(5), 6-1 as the Israeli girl seemed to lose her composure in the second set.
The last of the Girls QF matches will take place tonight under the lights where top seed Welles NEWMAN ranked 49 in the world takes on fellow American Hannah AYRAULT ranked 342 and in the draw from the Qualy. AYRAULT’s games seem to be slugfests to the delight of tennis fans and should be quite entertaining. NEWMAN’s WTN coefficient is 15.3 while AYRAULT comes in at 18.4.
