Binghamton, July 25, 2017
During an extremely long day that witnessed 14 matches and close to 10 hours of action, seven US-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 from India and seventh-seeded Australian Adam Whittington both dropped their opening-round matches.
Fifth-seed Mmoh went up against compatriot Marcos Giron 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 in two hours and five minutes.
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. The encounter lasted one hour and 10 minutes.
US-Americans Daniel Nguyen, Christian Harrison and wild card selection William Blumberg are all advancing in the singles draw 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 US-American Brandon Holt, 6-3, 2-6, 6-3, whereas Harrison knocked off another fellow US-American Eric Quigley 6-3, 6 (4) -7, 6-4.
Ramanathan And Whittinton Fall
The first upset of the day came early this morning when Briton Cameron Norrie 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 from the United States 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 US-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 of New Zealand 6-4, 7-6 (4). Earlier in the morning, Great Britain’s Edward Corrie took straight set wins over singles qualifier Dekel Bar from Israel, 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.
