Congrats to your Pro winners on the weekend:
– Singles: @Maria Jose Vargas
– Doubles: @Brenda Laime Jalil and Natalia Mendez Erlwein
Vargas finishes off her season with a win, while Laime wins her 4th pro doubles title of the season. Longoria had already clinched the year end title. More in the points section later.
R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=49103
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Let’s review the notable matches in the Singles draw.
Singles Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/61cdf6
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In the 32s, two of the best U21 players in the world (Bolivia’s Camila Rivero and USA’s Naomi Ros) topped LPRT tour vets Rodriguez and Synhorst to move on).
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In the 16s, chalk. All top 8 seeds moved on in the season’s final event. The only round of 16 to even go to a tie-breaker was in the 7/10 match, with @Kelani Lawrence advancing over Christina Amaya.
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In the Quarters, again chalk but with some closer matches.
– With @Alexandra Herrera now dropped to the #8 spot, the 1-8 is tougher than it normally is, and indeed @Paola Longoria had to go to the breaker to move past the lefty Herrera 6,(9),2.
– #4 @Ana Ana Gabriela MartÃnez cruised past #5 Mendez in two.
– #3 Vargas crushed Laime 6,2 in a battle of hard hitters.
– #2 @Montse Mejia wasn’t too troubled in advancing past Lawrence 7,6
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In the Semis, the clear-cut top four players on tour have separated themselves at this point, with a massive gap in the points ranking between #4 and #5. Herrera used to be part of this upper group, and Manilla’s hip injury continues to prevent her from even playing, else we’d be closer to a “big 6” rather than our current “big 4.”
And, true to form, when you have a group of closely matched players, week in and week out you just never know who’s gonna win. And this weekend, we got two upsets in the semis.
– Gaby took out Longoria by the surprising scoreline 3,12 to get to her second final of the season. If Martinez hadn’t missed an event this season, she might e pressing for #2 on tour.
– Vargas flipped the script on Mejia in the 2/3 semi final, winning an incredibly streaky match 6,(3),1.
In the Finals, Vargas powered past the Guatemalan 8,5. Gaby entered the event a little under the weather but made it to the final before running out of gas.
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Points Implications of results
With the win, Vargas made up the ground she was trailing Mejia for #2 on the season and now the two players are in a virtual dead heat for the #2 year end spot. It will come down to point fractions and who was able to win a game in an eventual loss; we’ll keep an eye out for hte final season rankings. No other changes in the top 16 came from the season ender, with the exception of the absent Carla Munoz missing points for the second straight event and now dropping all the way to #16. She’ll face an up-hill climb to get back to the quarters next season.
Here’s a link to my LPRT Rolling 2year Calendar XLS, which I use to approximate the points after each event. It is not exact but it’s usually close enough to the actual rankings, which @Ryan Rodgers does with @R2 Sports App on behalf of the tour after each event, to allow some quick post-event analysis before the rankings post.
women
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Doubles review
Match report in the PRS database: https://rball.pro/46a919
Laime and Mendez finish off the title as the #1 seeds, topping Vargas and Centellas in the final. Thus, 3 of the four finalists were Argentine, and all four are Bolivian-born players who have left to represent other South American federations.
Meja and Herrera, who dominated the pro doubles circuit last season (they won 6 of the 7 doubles titles in the 23-24 season) won just once together this year as Laime became the top dog. Laime had 4 titles this year with 3 different players. Vargas switched partners, moving from Mendez to Centellas, and managed to make the final in 6 of the season’s 7 events but could garner just one title. Meanwhile, the reign of Longoria/Salas seems over; they made just two finals this season as both players are facing career choices going forward.
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Thanks for all the streaming on the weekend, especially from broadcasters Timothy Baghurst, Jerry J Josey Jr., JTRball, and Tj Baumbaugh
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Next up?
Per our handy master racquetball calendar …
Next week is USA Junior Nationals, the last of the big USAR events of the season.
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tags
@LPRT