The first tournament of the year on the USTA Pro Circuit is an M25 in Winston-Salem North Carolina, with qualifying concluding today and four first round matches played.
Seventeen-year-old Jack Kennedy, the ITF junior No. 3, will be playing primarily on the ITF men’s and ATP Challenger tour in his last year of junior eligibility, as he prepares to begin his collegiate career in the fall at the University of Virginia. As a wild card this week in Winston-Salem, Kennedy defeated Karl Poling(Princeton, UNC) 6-3, 3-6, 6-0 in the first round of the tournament, which is being played on the Wake Forest indoor hard courts.
University of Kentucky freshman Nicolas Arseneault of Canada, who received main draw entry based on his ATP ranking of 501, defeated No. 2 seed Alex Rybakov(TCU) 7-6(4), 6-3.
Arizona State junior Bor Artnak of Slovenia, the No. 6 seed, defeated wild card Will Grant(Florida) 7-5, 3-6, 6-3 and No. 3 seed Daniel Milavsky(Harvard) beat Alan Magadan(UTSA) of Mexico 7-6(4), 6-1.
The other wild cards were awarded to two Wake Forest players: junior Luca Pow of Great Britain and freshman Mees Rottgering of the Netherlands. At this time last year, Rottgering was No. 1 in the ITF junior rankings and was not interested in playing college tennis, but with NIL and fewer eligibility hurdles, many current and former top juniors are taking another look at the collegiate option. Rottgering will face Ryan Fishbach(Virginia Tech) in the first round Wednesday; Pow’s opponent is qualifier Daniil Kakhniuk(New Mexico).
In addition to Kakhniuk, the American qualifiers are Theodore Dean(Yale, Cal), Matthew Thomson(Wake Forest), Zeke Clark(Illinois) and Ryan Colby(USC, Georgia). The other three qualifiers: Serbia’s Aleksa Ciric(Georgia Gwinnett), NC State sophomore Jules Leroux of France, and Nicola Ion of Canada.
Stefan Dostanic, who led Wake Forest to the NCAA title last spring in his final season of collegiate eligibility, is back in action after shutting down his season after September’s Winston-Salem Challenger due to an arm injury. He will play former Texas A&M standout Raphael Perot, the No. 4 seed, who went 20-2 on the USTA Pro Circuit last September and October.
Arizona senior Jay Friend, the No. 7 seed, plays Ciric in the first round Wednesday; Andres Andrade of Ecuador is the top seed and the former University of Florida standout has drawn recent NC State graduate Braden Shick, who went 17-2 in M15s in Asia to close out the year.