EDWARDSVILLE – St. Louis native and Indiana University player Carson Haskins won his first-round match, but the number one and three seeds were upset on an eventful first day of the main singles’ draw on day three of the $25,000 Edwardsville Futures Presented by The EGHM Foundation tennis tournament Wednesday at the Edwardsville Tennis Center.
Haskins, who qualified for the main draw with a win in last weekend’s Pro Wildcard Challenge tournament and winning a pair of qualifying round matches on Monday and Tuesday, started his quest in the main draw with a 6-3, 6-3 win over Alan Kohen of Argentina in a late-afternoon match. But there were two big shock results in the opening round, as top-seeded Ryan Shane lost to Jacob Dunbar 6-2, 6-2, and third seed Ulises Blanch fell to Austin Rapp 6-3, 7-6 (7-4 in the tiebreaker).
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The upset of Shane in the opening round has the potential to set the tone for the rest of the tournament.
“Definitely could,” said tournament director Dave Lipe. “It’s wide open. Thirty-two guys in this tournament and anybody had a chance to win. Anybody still has a chance to win. I watched a lot of Zeke Clark’s match today, and I thought both those guys (Clark and his opponent, Errol Smith) played one of the better matches I’ve ever seen in the nine years we’ve had this tournament, honestly. His (Clark’s) opponent, Mr. Smith, had plenty of opportunities to quit and give up, and he just kept battling back, and really made it an exciting match. It was really fun to watch both those guys. Yeah, it’s been a great day.”
One of the main features of the Wednesday matches was the presence of ball kids, who helped out in the running of the matches tremendously, and Lipe praised all of their efforts.
“Having ball kids has been a real boon,” Lipe said. “The players have loved that, the ball kids have done a really phenomenal job. They add so much to the event. I know that a lot of these kids enjoy being ball kids. The fact that they enjoy it is awesome because they really add a lot to it. So, I really want to thank them, and Kirk Schleuter, who’s organized their efforts. It’s very rare that a tournament this level will have ball kids in the first round. So, it’s a great effort to have them for all 16 of these matches today.
“The tennis was great, there was a great upset, the tennis has been phenomenal,” Lipe continued, “the weather has been beautiful. We’re supposed to have beautiful weather all week, we’ve got record crowds, we have tons of people out today watching all this tennis, and we’ve got a lot to go yet here. It’s 4:16 (on Wednesday afternoon), and we think we’re going to be here for three more hours.”
With a successful first two days already in the books and a big third day on Wednesday, Lipe is looking forward to the remaining four days of play, with great tennis still ahead.
“Absolutely,” Lipe said. “Looking forward to great weather, and more great crowds here. This first third of the parking lot has been full all day, so a lot of people out. Both pavilions have had a lot of fans. They’ve seen good tennis on courts two and three, and over on court five, also, and the tennis has been phenomenal. The guys have all played hard. It’s been a fun day.”
In the results from the opening round of the singles main draw, it was Dunbar upsetting Shane, Gianni Ross won over Alexander Klintcharov of New Zealand 6-4, 6-4, Nathan Ponwith winning over Brandon Walkin of Australia 6-4, 2-6, 6-1. and Christian Langmo won over seventh-seeded Michail Pervolarakis of Greece 2-6, 7-5, 6-2.
In the second quarter of the draw, fourth seed Sekou Bangoura won over Hady Habib of Lebanon 6-4, 6-3, it was Alexander Lebedev winning over Alexander Cozbinov of Moldova 6-2, 5-7, 6-4, Santiago Fa Rodriguez Taverna of Argentina defeated Gui Gomes 6-4, 6-3, and fifth-seed Liam Caruana of Italy eliminated JanMagnus Johnson 6-0, 6-1.
Moving on to the bottom half of the draw, in the third quarter, seventh-seed Petros Chrysochos of Cyprus won over Alfredo Perez 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, Nicolas Moreno de Alboran won over Connor Farren 6-3, 6-3, it was Felix Corwin over Joshua Howard-Tripp of South Africa 6-0, 6-4, and Rapp ousted Blanch.
In the final quarter of the draw, Strong Kirchheimer won over eighth-seeded Luis Patino of Mexico 6-3, 6-3, Clark won over Smith 6-4, 7-6 (7-4 in the tiebreak), Haskins won over Kohen, and second seed Kevin King defeated James Kent Trotter of Japan 6-3, 6-0.
The second round of the singles and the quarterfinals of the doubles will be played on Thursday, with the matches getting underway at 10 a.m. In the featured singles matches, Chrysochos meets up with Moreno de Alboran, Haskins will take on King, and Kirchheimer will go against Clark. In the doubles quarterfinals, which will start at various times, top-seeded Bangoura and Anderson Reed will play the team of George Goldhoff and Perez, Corwin and Moreno de Alboran will go against Patino and Trotter, it will be Caruana and Ponwith meeting second seed Ian Dempster and Korey Lovett, and McClain Kessler and Preston Touliatos will meet Abraham Asaba of Ghana and Charlie Ernhardt.
Later that evening will be the very popular Mitch-n-Friends clinic for special needs players, which is one of the most anticipated events of the tournament week.
“I don’t know if it’s the most popular, but it’s one of the really popular events that we have,” Lipe said. “Kids night had over 150 people out here Monday night, and tonight, we’ll have about 40 or so people out here for the high-performance clinic. But yeah, Mitch-n-Friends is one of the really important things that we do. it’s a great event, and it’s able to include, and it involves a great number of people, and as always, we’re really looking forward to it.”
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