APP Tour Philadelphia Open – Live Random Thoughts

It’s a fairly busy weekend for the two of us so the thoughts will likely be more sporadic and random than they usually are. But we’ll be keeping tabs on this one. Results are very interesting with the field missing a lot of the top players.

Sunday, August 28th – Singles

7:00 pm EST – Both number 1 seeds win in 2 games. Fairly tight for Fed and slightly less tight for Jorja. Fun weekend!

4:26 pm EST – Currently in a rain delay here. Fudge is back to the gold aftering handling Truong 5 ans 6. Pablo is the big winner of the weekend as he stomped Cinola 3 and 3. Tellez’s stock is rising.

2:39 pm EST – After a sub-par New Jersey showing, Alix Truong is in the gold medal match with some convincing wins. Truong won her first loser’s match 16-14 then has proceeded to beat Milan Rane (15-3), Annica Cooper (15-9), and now wiping the floor with Rosie Johanson (15-0). A medal for Truong in singles and she gets a chance against Megan Fudge to go for gold. What a run from another teenager.

Tellez will play Cincola to go to bronze. Tellez beat Klinger, 15-3, and it’s been quite the weekend for Pablo who was not cut from his MLP team. In a weaker field, Tellez has proven his worth all weekend long.

12:00 pm EST – Player of the day to keep an eye on that we have never heard of getting good wins is Ross Whittaker. He beat CJ Klinger and Alex Neumann before losing badly to John Cincola. Two very solid wins from Whittaker. Jack Foster beat Gabe Tardio in 3, which is one of Foster’s better wins recently so he’ll play Staksrud in the semis.

Notable to see Rosie Johanson with the win over Milan Rane, 12-10 and 11-3. Her singles game appears to be legit and the Jorja Johnson matchup should be a very interesting litmus test for her game. Megan Fudge got by Emily Ackerman in two but Ackerman looks like she has raw skills to be quite competitive in singles. She is still a lot of tennis with the slice backhand at the net but it is always intriguing to see someone more willing to get to net and be decently comfortable there.

Saturday – August 27th – Doubles

6:48 pm EST – Rane and Johnson pushed Stratman and David more than we would have expected but the #1 seed comes out on top. That’s 3 women’s titles in a row for David as she reminds us that she is elite.

Barrientos and DJ Young get pushed to 3 as well by Tellez/Long, and they also come out on top. Double gold for DJ Young and Mario Barrientos benefits from seemingly being ok with the whole DJ experience.

4:52 pm EST – Tellez and Long are onto a gold medal match after winning in 3. Lica is doing the thing where he plays 5 feet off the line again and that’s not ideal. It’s a huge silver or gold for Tellez and Long. No reason they can’t find a gold at this point.

3:01 pm EST – DJ Young and Mario living on the edge today. They are in the gold medal match after going 15-13 in the third against Eden and Andrei. It felt lile a million side outs once the teams got to 10s and no one could score. We’ll likely see this matchup again as Long/Tellez were able to get through Staksrud/Cincola to get to bronze.

Johnson/Rane will get another shot at revenge after beating Paolicelli and Truong to get back to bronze. It will be interesting to see where the head space is at for Rane and Johnson as a double loss McMillan and Fudge would not feel good.

12:15 pm EST – The men’s side could have been very crazy this morning. Barrientos/DJ are currently playing Staksrud/Cincola, but they only won 12-10 in the third over CJ Klinger and Tito Lladro. Klinger’s game is on the up and he is someone MLP teams are probably considering as an outside shot to get drafted. In this other matchup, Cincola and Staksrud beating Tellez/Long is a very good win for them. Both Cincola and Staksrud are on the MLP border and they start their day off very well. A win over Mario and DJ would feel extra good for both of them too.

On the women’s side, Fudge/McMillan get a really tight two game win, 9 and 9, over Rane/Johnson. First time partnership for Fudge and McMillan, and that’s a strong win for them. Milan Rane had the good day yesterday and there’s still lots of time to come through the backside, but it’s not a ringing endorsement of the Jorja/Milan partnership. They will play David/Stratman in the winner’s bracket final.

Friday, August 26th – Mixed

7:50 pm EST – After a decent fight from Tellez and Rane, Young and David are able to complete the double dip against Koop/Daescu. They go 11-7, 11-9 and a very convincing 15-4. DJ Young is a scary man when he is on and David is pretty much the ideal fit for him as a partner both as a player and emotionally. Good gold for DJ and Viv.

5:11 pm EST – Man, a bunch of close matches today. Koop/Daescu somehow pull it out against David/Young. After winning game 1 handily, they lose 12-10 in the second and were down 9-5 in the third, only to pull it out 11-9. We’ll expect to see this matchup again but that is a very tight match overall. Koop continues her strong run just generally and Daescu’s mixed results keep trending up. 

Rane/Tellez will now play David/Young in the bronze. The Rane/Tellez bronze is not shocking but it is still surprising. They had a couple of really tight wins to get to this spot, including a 16-14 win over Truong/Stone and then got it done 15-13 over Johnson/Tardio. Tellez’s mixed results have been very strong and this will be Rane’s second APP podium as she is proving her worth following the MLP trade to the Hard 8s. The match was not streamed so we didn’t get to see it but 15-3 over Stratman/Neumann is definitely a surprise. We’ll see if they can make some noise in the bronze match. 

4:04 pm EST – Brutal loss for Gabe and Jorja. They were up 9-8 in game 2 on Vivienne/DJ, lost 11-9 and then they had match point in game 3 at 11-10, and Gabe played a ball that was 100% going out. Gabe also missed an overhead to lose the match. That’s one of those moral type victories for the kids that you really don’t want to call a moral victory because it was there for the taking. If people had questions about Gabe being picked for MLP, this should answer some of them at least. 

On the backside, Neumann/Stratman are going to be playing in the match to go to bronze as they have had a strong run today. These tennis guys can come in and compete in mixed much sooner than they can in doubles it seems. It would not be a surprise to see this team in the bronze medal match as who knows how Jorja/Gabe react to having to play a couple of matches to get back to a medal when they very well could have been in the winners final. 

2:15 pm EST – Some close matches on the winner’s side all day but the matches have been ending up pretty chalk. Daescu/Koop got pushed by Neumann/Stratman after losing game 1, 12-10, but they pulled it together to win in 3 games. Tardio/Johnson were also pushed by Fudge/Auvergne after losing game 1, 11-6, but it was 11-6 and 11-1 from there on out. These teams have shown they could come back through the backside and give a scare to anyone in a game to 15 to get to bronze.

1:04 pm EST – We have not seen Annica Cooper and Juan Arraya for quite some time and then start out their day pretty well with a win over Olivia McMillan and Brendon Long, 11-9 in the third, and they also pushed DJ Young and Vivienne David to 3 games, losing 11-7 in the third. That’s an impressive early showing for two players in their 40s that haven’t been playing pro tournaments recently. Jorja Johnson/Gabe Tardio squeaked by Milan Rane/Pablo Tellez, 11-9 in the third. This one is a match that you would have expected to be close as Tellez continues to show his mixed game is very strong. 

Koop and Daescu have rolled through so far and will now get Stratman/Neumann on center court. It’ll be intriguing to see if that one is close at all. I would suspect no but far crazier things have happened.