During an extremely long day that witnessed 14 matches and close to 10 hours of action, seven Americans, including fifth-seed Michael Mmoh and sixth-seed Denis Kudla advanced into the round of 16 at the 24th Levene Gouldin & Thompson (LGT) Tennis Challenger. Play on Tuesday also provided two upsets as third-seeded Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND) and seventh-seeded Adam Whittington (AUS) both dropped their opening-round matches.
Fifth-seed Mmoh went up against Marcos Giron (USA) early this morning in what was supposed to be yesterday’s feature match. Giron put on quite a show, but Mmoh was able to pull out straight set wins, 7-5, 7-5. Sixth-seed Kudla went up against Joao Pedro Sorgi of Brazil, putting on a strong showing also winning in straight sets, 6-2, 6-4.
Americans Daniel Nguyen, Christian Harrison and wild card selection William Blumberg are all advancing in the singles bracket as well. Blumberg defeated Luke Saville in straight sets, 7-5, 6-3. Nguyen and Harrison each had a three-set victories over their opponents. Nguyen defeated fellow American Brandon Holt, 6-3, 2-6, 6-3 whereas Harrison knocked off another fellow American Eric Quigley 6-3, 6 (4) -7, 6-4.
The first upset of the day came early this morning when Cameron Norrie (GBR) knocked off third-seeded Ramanathan. Ramanathan tried to hold Norrie off in the first set as they went into tiebreaker, but Norrie came out with a 7-6 (3) win before taking the second set by an easy 6-2. Coming off of a future’s title, Dominik Koepfer of Germany also gets some upset fame as he went on to defeat seventh-seeded Whittington mid-afternoon. The match, going into three sets, was over two hours long. Koepfer won the first set 6-4, before Whittington extended the match by taking the second 7-5. Koepfer, however, fired back with a 6-2 third set victory.
Second-seeded Alexander Bublik from Kazakhstan defeated lucky loser Connor Farren (USA) in three sets. Farren fought hard in the second set winning 6-4 to extend the match, but Bublik took the first and third set 7-5 to advance in singles bracket play.
Fourth-seeded Akira Santillan, a native of Australia, took a three-set victory over American Evan Song. Song made some noise in the first set, defeating Santillan 6-3, but couldn’t hold him off as Santillan came back to win 7-6 (4) and 6-0 in the last two sets.
Later in the day, Court 5 saw Ze Zhang from China defeat Jose Statham (NZL) 6-4, 7-6 (4). Earlier in the morning, Great Britain’s Edward Corrie took straight set wins over singles qualifier Dekel Bar (ISR), 6-3, 6-2.
As darkness started to creep up on Rec Park, Kevin King and Raymond Sarmiento battled through a match lasting over two hours. After dropping the first set to Sarmiento 6-2, King came back with a 10-8 tiebreaker second set win to extend the match. In a back and forth third set, King held Sarmiento off and walked away with a 7-5 victory. Wild card selection Alex Rybakov defeated qualifier Adam El Mihdawy in straight sets, 6-3, 6-2.
Today’s feature match between first-seeded Jordan Thompson and Evan King was suspended in the second set due to darkness. Thompson and King went head to head in a tiebreaker first set, where Thompson took the upper hand 7-6 (1). Thompson grabbed an early 3-1 lead in the second set, before King won back to back games to tie it at 3 before the decision was made to call the match until tomorrow.
Tomorrow’s feature match will be between Binghamton University Men’s Assistant Tennis Coach James Hignett and his doubles partner William Mendler. They will take on fellow American’s Connor Farren and Raymond Sarmiento no later than 5:30 pm.