Quick Saturday
We had some amazingly quick matches today, even for the qualifying. A few bagels, but 34 minutes, and 3 matches at 40 minutes. That is pretty quick. Still, a good start. Great to get out and see, really even just hear the hard striking. Impressive to see 'em hit so hard, so consistently. The match of the day looked to be the Schwandt-Fugate match. Fugate, a Rochester native, had a bigger serve for a weapon. Schwandt appeared to have a bit more of the all around tools and the focus. The first set went as tight as it gets until the tiebreak. 1-1 in the tiebreak and a line call goes against Schwandt, actually it initially went his way and then it was changed to replay the point. He wasn't happy. 2 points later, an overrule on a fault and that was it... focus was lost for the tiebreak. To Schwandt's credit, he fought back or stayed mentally tough, went to 2 more tiebreaks and pulled it out. They both worked a lot in that match and tough to pick one to lose. Schwandt's next opponent in Pokrajac was a similar big serve for a weapon and not quite as consistent on the error/winner ratio... but Pok still managed to squeeze it out in 2.

The top seed Ebelthite breezed by Sherwood. Sherwood held initially with booming serves, but couldn't keep up.

The BTC winner, Sajous, came up with some good results today with 2 wins (the only one to do so). The match against Mergea not quite as clean, but Sajous proved a little more mentally tough in the end. Sajous almost blew a 6-1 lead in the 2nd set tiebreak, eased on it a little too much and Mergea came up with 4 straight points to get to 6-5 (Sajous serving), including 2 straight double faults in that stretch. That returned the favor from earlier though.. Mergea had a 5-3 lead in the 2nd set and let Sajous back in it with 2 straight double faults of his own to be broken, yet still leading 5-4. Mergea did the same in the 1st set for the only break, 2 straight double faults to be broken.

Also have to point out Mamitt. A pro that has been around, and certainly here quite a few times. He's played with some of the best of the years. Good to see a veteran out there.

Ebelthite def Sherwood 6-1,6-1
Schwandt def Fugate, 6-7(3), 7-6(3), 6-7(4)
Pokrajac def Schwandt 6-4,7-5
Mamitt def Mirzadeh 6-2,6-4
Arnautovic def Putyera 6-4-6-1
Wolmarans def Arnautovic 6-1,6-0
Sajous def Pulatov 7-5,6-3
Sajous def Mergea 6-3,7-6(5)
Sarstrand def McDuffee 6-0,6-0
Gregorc def Almeida 6-0,6-1
Bourgeois def Diao Natale 7-5,6-7(5),6-1


For tomorrow, full load at 10am and then doubles qualifying. Filtered out some of them today, tomorrow should see even more tight ones. Also probably have Johansson practicing and all the others.

For the main draw, Jenkins gets in as a result of a few drop outs. Kuznetsov becomes the wild card. Kuznetsov from down in PA. Johansson draws Jenkins in that first round. Okun-Baker could be an interesting 1st round matchup. Looked a lot different about 3 days ago, a fine looking draw on this beautiful Saturday!