On Tuesday, top players kicked off their campaigns to capture the boys’ and girls’ trophies at the 2021US Open, and several shock defeats highlighted the action. Florida’s Alexis Blokhina produced perhaps the biggest upset of the day, defeating girls’ No. 3 seed Diana Shnaider, 6-2, 7-6. Shnaider, who reached the semifinals of the junior French Open and won the girls’ doubles title at Wimbledon earlier this year, made the Floridian earn the victory. Blokhina was up a set and 4-0 in the second and served for the match twice; the Russian broke at love at 4-5 and then saved three match points at 5-6 to force a tiebreak, where the American stepped up her aggression to prevail. Blokhina was previously 0-4 against the higher-ranked opponent.
Both the No. 4 seeds in the boys’ and girls’ singles draw also lost, in three sets and within minutes of each other. Jakub Mensik, of the Czech Republic, needed four match points but eventually got the better of American Bruno Kuzuhara, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3. Kuzuhara had opportunities to get the match back on serve in the final game but couldn’t convert. And Argentina’s Solana Sierra came back from a set down to defeat Spaniard and reigning junior Wimbledon girls’ champion Ane Mintegi Del Olmo, 4-6, 7-5, 6-3. No girl has captured both Wimbledon and US Open singles titles in the same season since Kirsten Flipkens accomplished the feat, in 2003.
American Katja Wiersholm came back from a set down to defeat girls’ No. 11 seed Mara Guth 5-7,6-4, 6-1. Wiersholm won an impressive 79% of her first serve points over the course of the battle. And the boys’ No. 5 seed Jack Pinnington Jones, of the United Kingdom, was forced to retire in the third set of his match, allowing American Colton Smith to move on to the third round.
No. 2 seed Samir Banerjee, the boys’ champion at Wimbledon, did advance, defeating Germany’s Max Hans Rehberg, 6-0, 6-4, in just over an hour. The Basking Ridge, N.J., resident won a 19-minute first set against the German, then fought back from a break down in the second. American Victor Lilov, the No. 6 seed and Wimbledon boys’ finalist, also made it to Round 3, over Australian Philip Sekulic in three sets, 7-6, 4-6, 6-2.
Like his top-seeded counterpart in the men’s draw, Novak Djokovic, boys’ No. 1 seed Juncheng Shang faced a stern test from an American but ultimately prevailed, taking out California’s Aidan Mayo, 7-6, 6-3. Mayo, one of the rare Americans these days to play with a one-handed backhand, broke the Chinese player early in the first and served for the set at 5-4. Through the first eight games Shang had won just three points on Mayo’s serve. Like Djokovic, the No. 1-ranked junior in the world adjusted and found his groove.
Other top seeds were in a hurry. Girls’ No. 1 seed and 2020 junior Australian Open champion Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva sailed past American Theadora Rabman, 6-1, 6-0, in 46 minutes; No. 2 seed Alexandra Eala, from the Philippines, overcame another Floridian, Charlotte Owensby, in a little over an hour, 6-3, 6-3; No. 5 seed Linda Fruhvirtova, of the Czech Republic, also needed just an hour to knock out 15-year-old American Clervie Ngounoue, 6-0, 6-2; and Washington D.C., native and No. 7 seed Robin Montgomery hit 16 winners and went five-for-five in net points in her 49-minute, 6-2, 6-0, defeat of Canadian Annabelle Xu.
In doubles action, three of the first four boys’ doubles matches played ended in match tiebreaks. Americans Nicholas Godsick and Ethan Quinn were the sole team to get it done in straights, defeating the all-German duo of Philip Florig and Rehberg, 6-2, 7-6. On the girls’ side, Ngounoue and Owensby teamed up and shook off their singles losses earlier in the day to advance to Round 2 of the draw over Bianca Behulova and Alina Shcherbinina, 6-4, 6-4. Rabman did as well, partnering with fellow American Ariana Anazagasty-Pursoo Pursoo to overcome Marina Stakusic and Ya Yi Yang, 6-4, 6-3.
