If you're getting tired of all the focus on bagel girls, if you'd rather keep an eye on up-and-coming players instead, dont forget about Hilary. She's an 18 year old Californian, a high school senior. She's currently ranked in the 600's, and she just won a $10K in Mexico, which will boost her ranking quite a bit (six points can make for a big leap at this level)!
She received a qualy wild card into (Tier I) San Diego last summer, and took 7th seed Vasilisa Bardina to 3 sets; not bad! Here's a news blurb on that match:
"Of the graduates of the “opportunity” series the Acura had arranged as a means of affording area players a vehicle in which to gain the qualifying draw, the one who made the strongest stand was Hilary Barte, a Southern California high school champion. Barte, from Los Angeles, was down 0-5 in the final set. She mounted a rally that Vasilisa Bardina of Russia barely survived 6-2, 3-6, 6-4."
Aside from that one time, all her pro experience has been at the challenger level.
Thanks for the info. I hope she gets a couple WCs during the summer hardcourts and that we see her at a couple ITFs late spring/ early summer . School should be over by then :lol:
Although Hilary lost in the first round of the next 10K she played, she still leaped from 635 to 566 in the rankings, on the strength of her Obregon title. And that's with only 11 tournaments in her year.
I wonder if Hilary is planning to play college tennis or turn pro.
Last week she played in the Mazatlan, Mexico 10K. She reached the semis, where she lost a tight battle -- 64 46 57 -- to the top seed and eventual winner, Nanda Alves. Another good week for Hilary; by playing in these 10Ks, she's getting a lot of matches under her belt, and her ranking is rising, slowly but surely.
Hilary's next ITF event is the Carson, Calif. 50K, which starts next weekend. She's in the qualy field there; I hope she draws Brie.
Re: Young Americans to Watch! BARTE, OUDIN, and MUHAMMED
Okay, I'm not sure it makes sense at this point to start separate threads for each of these promising young Americans, so I decided to add Melanie Oudin and Asia Muhammed to Hilary's thread -- I'm sure Hilary won't mind.
When I've got time, I will post some basic Oudin and Muhammed info here, or someone else can.
In the meantime, I know that Asia is playing this week in the El Paso qualy field, so good luck to her. I hope she'll qualify and NOT draw Coco!
Re: Young Americans to Watch! BARTE, OUDIN, and MUHAMMED
You're right; Oudin is already ranked 675 with only five tournaments; not bad at all.
Asia, who is a product of Andre Agassi's Boys and Girls Club program in Las Vegas, turned 16 last month. Wisely, she's still playing Junior events, and she hasn't played too many ITF events yet, but she made a stir in March when she took Youlia Fedossova to 3 sets in the Las Vegas 75K. She's in the El Paso 10K this week, where she cruised through her 2 qualy matches with the loss of only 3 games -- a nice improvement over last year, where she lost her first qualy match here.
Re: Young Americans to Watch: BARTE, OUDIN, and MUHAMMED
Carson r1: Barte def Podkolzina 64 57 75
Here's a report from tennis_pIayer, who attended the match and posted this on the Carson thread: finally we have some Hilary info:
"Barte's a lefty, and plays like one. Good spin on all serves, occ good pop. Plays topspin forehands and backhands are a little flatter but still topspun. Ball has tendency to land a little short. She can generate good racket head spead and hit winners on her fh when she wants. Movement is excellent, both side to side and front. Very advernturesome and comes to net to volley balls often. good touch, and good overheads. She just needs to cut down on a few errors on long rallies, and also be more aggressive on her groundies. She's a very short girl so she'll need to hit the gym to achieve this. she's def a figher, b/c she was down 2-5 in the final set and took 5 straight games."
Re: Young Americans to Watch: BARTE, OUDIN, and MUHAMMED
Both Melanie and Asia won their second round match today!
Asia MUHAMMED (USA) defeated Chrissie SEREDNI (USA) (5) 62 62
Melanie OUDIN (USA) (6) defeated Erin Carol STEPHENS (USA) 61 62
Asia will meet Kim-Ahn Nguyen and Melanie would play another young American Kimberley Couts.
Janie, we should add Kim Couts, Jamie Hampton and Ashley Weihold since three of them are making their waves to the ITF tour this season!
Young Americans to Watch: BARTE, OUDIN, and MUHAMMED
Jamie and Ashley have a separate thread. As for Couts: sure, maybe later I'll throw her in. But what about the impressive Alexandra Mueller?
Let's see how many names I can get in the thread title over the next couple weeks , then we might have to start a 2nd thread for "the rest" to cover the rest of this group of up and coming Americans. I've been following the Challenger circuit for years but it's only this year that I've tuned in on the young US players, and there seem to be a lot of them, which is great.
Meanwhile, Hilary lost yesterday to the 6th seed, Val Tetreault. Maybe her titanic battle with Podkolzina wore her out?
EDITED TO ADD: Okay, Couts is in -- I said maybe later, and it's later, right? But she beat Oudin today, so how can she not be in?
Re: Young Americans to Watch: BARTE, OUDIN, MUELLER, MUHAMMED
Okay, now we've got a place to follow Mueller, as well, just because I was impressed by what I read in this post by trusty poster tennis_pIayer in the Carson thread (thanks again, tennis_pIayer ):
"speaking of ALex mueller, i'd never heard of her, but this girl has a great BIG GAME. out of everyone, she had the biggest serves (except for maybe haynes) But there were some games where she'd get 100% first serves, and nelson wouldn't have much play. Her groundies are also big, but slight topspin mostly flat. a lot of winners in this match, reminded me a little of Davenport vs seles."
Re: Young Americans to Watch: BARTE, MUELLER, MUHAMMED & OUDIN
Thanks for the pics! Barte looks small and wiry, like Milagros. I hope she can follow in Milagros' footsteps.
Meanwhile, for this ever-changing thread, I have now taken out Kim Couts' name, since someone has created a thread just for her. I'm planning to stick with these four ... but who knows what will happen; originally it was meant to be a thread just for Barte.