West Region ITA Day 1 Recap

Singles

This baby’s about to get started up again, so I’m gonna pump this thing out. We’ll start by checking in on the favorites, seeing how the Darkhorses are shaping up, and revisiting the intriguing first round matches. Follow that up with some general thoughts, and then touch on doubles. Now that I’ve introduced this article like a politician, let’s get started.

The Favorites

Nothing to see here, folks. The top three seeds cruised through their first two rounds. Dorn dropped a total of three games, but neither Weichert nor Wood had to play any extra tennis to get through. As always, things will ramp up pretty significantly from here. Dorn starts his morning with Dancu from Oxi. I don’t foresee any problems there, but either Nichols or Macey (probably Nichols) will be a pretty serious threat in the quarters. Weichert has an even tougher day ahead of him. Three Stags are remaining in his quarter, and even if he gets past the freshman Morkovine, he could run into a buzzsaw in the quarters. More on that later. Wood, meanwhile, didn’t have the easiest of times with two guys I wouldn’t consider to be challengers in this draw. He plays Yasgoor in the Round of 16 in a pressure/trap match. If he gets through the Sagehen freshman, he’ll probably have to face Whittier’s David Konstantinov, who slaughtered one of CMS’ 4-star freshmen in the first round. Watch out.

The Darkhorses

So far, so good for my Darkhorses. Cardenas rolled through a tough CMS sophomore in the first round before serving up breakfast for two in the second. So far, it looks like the Kingsmen might have found their replacement Ballou. We won’t jump to conclusions until he gets through Pereverzin and Yeh, but at this point, I would be pretty surprised not to see him in the semis.

Meanwhile, Cameron Bernhardt is looking fantastic. He’s dropped four games so far, but he’ll be going against teammate Skyler Butts in the Round of 16 today. As one commenter noted, Butts may just win this whole thing, so that could be the match of the day. I love to see a good comeback story, so I’ll be rooting for Bernhardt in that battle of teammates

Matches to watch

Macey got through his first round match with relative ease before battling by Redlands’ Parker Wilson. He’s got, in my mind, the 2nd most interesting Round of 16 match this morning against Cal Lu’s Nichols. Nichols is perpetually underrated, but he’s got the #6 seed here, which comes with a fair bit of pressure. That should be a battle.

Morkovine got past Treacy just fine, but he’ll have some tougher competition today in Weichert. I see that one going three with the Sagehen taking it.

Thompson crushed Jones in a match that was immediately rendered irrelevant when Zhenya destroyed Thompson in the next round.

Yasgoor cruised by Shimizu while bitterness oozed through the Whittier twittier. The P-P freshman is probably just getting started with Wood right now.

Before we move on to doubles, we’ll give a respectful nod to the match between Hunt and Konstantinov. This tournament is on the verge of turning into a CMS bloodbath, but we’ll get at least one non-CMS quarterfinalist. Hunt finished last year on a tear, but Konstantinov had the most impressive win of day 1. You already know who I think is gonna win this one.

Doubles

Surprisingly, doubles went pretty much according to form. The big upset of the day was Joshua Kim and Graham Maasen taking out Pereverzin and Butts (cut to Belletto pulling his hair out one by one). Other than that, Deguchi and Littlejohn are the last Slugs standing from a once-proud doubles program, Bernhardt was just as impressive with four players on the court as he was with two, Bello/Weichert “upset” Goetz/Scandalis, and Cal Lu’s top two teams cruised. If the Kingsmen can keep playing doubles like this, they will be just as dangerous this year as they were last year. Wood/Dorn remain the team to beat.