Natera wins in Monterrey. Photo US Open 2019, Photographer Kevin Savory
There was a nice little RKT event in San Nicolas (Monterrey), NL, Mexico over the weekend that also was an IRT Tier 4 event. Lets do a quick run through the draw.
13 in the Men’s pro draw. Lets review the notable matches. The draw went chalk to the quarters.
In the quarters: – #1 Javier Estrada got a straight forward win over #8 Juan Loreto in two. – #5 Alex Cardona was taken to the distance by #4 Gerardo Franco Gonzalez before winning 11-10. Despite being basically a part-time pro player Cardona continues to get wins. – #3 Alan Natera Chavez advanced in two over #6 Erick Cuevas. – #7 Jaime Martell Neri took out #2 Ernesto Ochoa in two games. This was an upset by seeds, but not by our personal rankings, which have Martell playing exceptionally well lately and really rising up the world ranks.
In the semis: – #5 Cardona avenged a recent loss to Estrada in Mexico City, advancing in a tie-breaker after two close games. – #3 Natera took out #7 Martell in an 11-9 breaker
In the final – #3 Natera saved match point against in game two, then got it to the tie-breaker where he ran away with the win over #5 Cardona (13),14,4.
I have Natera slowly creeping up my personal world rankings; i’ve now got him just outside the top 10. He’s one of a slew of top Mexican players who I wish could compete on the IRT more frequently to see how they’d rate. Cardona is well known to racquetball enthusiasts, as a 2-time WRT winner and a constant for years in the back ends of Mexican regional events.
—————- In doubles, Franco/Cardona met up with Estrada/Natera in the final. Both teams featured excellent doubles players, making for an exciting final. Franco & Cardona came out on top 12,12, preventing a double win on the weekend for Natera.
Estrada tops a solid field with a couple of good wins to take the title. Photo via US Open 2019, Photographer: Kevin Savory
Here’s a quick wrap up of the excellent RKT event held this past weekend in Mexico City, Mexico, which featured a solid set of top seeds of Mexican Nationals, a full 32-man Open draw, and a solid 15-team doubles draw.
Even experienced fans may have had a tough time recognizing the bulk of the draw in this event; past the top 8 seeds there are not too many players who have appeared in pro events in the past, but the top seeds in this event made for a great saturday/sunday of action. Lets recap the action:
The quarters featured top-level racquetball by number of Mexico’s finest: – #1 @Gerardo Gerardo Franco Gonzalez took out youngster Erick Cuevas 12,3. Franco had benefited from the rare double forfeit to basically get a bye into the quarters here. – #5 Ochoa got a very solid win over #4 Alan Natera Chavez 11,4. Ochoa lost to Natera in a local Juarez event earlier this year, but turned the tides to take this solid win. – #3 Javier Estrada had the most impressive win in the round, avenging a loss in the Juarez event earlier this year and topping the dangerous former WRT champ Alex Cardona 11,13 to move on. Since his Black Gold win, Estrada has struggled to maintain consistency in his results and could use a solid run of wins. – #2 Javier Mar, the tourney favorite despite being seeded behind Franco, eased past NIeto 5,10 to setup an excellent semi against Estrada.
————- In the semis, a couple of upsets and surprising results.
– #5 Ochoa continued his run of upsets, taking out #1 Franco in two solid games. Great tourney for Ochoa.
– #3 Estrada outlasted #2 Mar in an 11-8 tie-breaker. This is the best win Estrada has had since he took the Black Gold Cup.
————– In the final, Estrada held off Ochoa’s attempts in game 2 to push the match to a tiebreaker and took the title 9,14.
————— In the solid Doubles draw:
– Mar/Ochoa, as the 1 seeds, advanced to the final with a walkover win over Ruben Martinez/Romo in the semis. – Franco/Cardona upset the #2 seeded team of Estrada/Natera 11-8 to make the final.
In the final, Cardona continued to show why he’s one of the best doubles players out there by helping his team to victory, winning 10,13.
——————- Great event, I hope they continue it and coordinate with the IRT next year so there’s not a scheduling conflict.
Landa the double winner in Chihuahua this past weekend. Photo unk
A RKT-associated tourney was put on this past weekend with little fan fare…. but it featured most of the top Mexican pros and some excellent singles and doubles action.
Here’s a quick wrap-up. Follow RKT to get video streams of most of the good matches from the weekend.
Thanks to Jaime Martell Neri for the heads up and sending me the draws 🙂
—————– Singles wrap-up
In the qtrs: – #1 Alex Landa advanced over a local player.
– #5 Eduardo Garay Rodriguez upset Alan Natera Chavez to move on; Natera was upset early in the US Open and I probably would have favored him in this match too. Garay has been trying to get it going this season but has been unlucky in match-ups on the pro tour thus far (his losses this season have been to Carson, DLR and Keller; a tough slate).
– #3 Javier Mar took out Javier Estrada, who was not able to replicate his success from the Black Gold event in his home town.
– #7 Alex Cardona upset #2 Rodrigo Montoya Solís to move on. This was much better than a 2/7 match-up; the two-time WRT winner holds a 4-2 career h2h lead over Montoya on that tour … and beat him again here.
In the semis: – #1 Landa topped hard-hitting #5 Garay – #3 Mar beat #7 Cardona (11),4,4; I wonder if this score-line indicates a lack of match fitness for Cardona; after beating the very top-quality Mar in game one, he gets wiped out in games 2 and 3.
In the final: #1 Landa eked by #3 Mar 14,10, a scoreline I would have expected knowing the quality of these two players. Mar has more than demonstrated that he’s a top 8 player in the world through his periodic IRT results.
———————- Doubles wrap-up:
The doubles draw was solid, and quality teams such as Ernesto Ochoa/Estrada, the Nateras and the Garays couldn’t even make the final.
The final ended up being #1 vs #2: Landa/Cardona d Montoya/Mar 11-7 to make Landa a double winner on the weekend. Its saying something when the defending Pan American champion team of Montoya/Mar is beaten by their countrymen on the depth of the doubles circuit right now.
In the 16s: – #8 Amaya Cris dominated #9 Masiel Rivera Oporto 3,9 to advance. This should be an interesting season for Amaya with her renewed training regiment. – #12 Montse Mejia got a solid 2-game win over #5 Rhonda Rajsich, reversing the result from their meeting in Lima a few weeks ago. – #4 Alexandra Herrera barely held off #13 Jessica Parrilla 11-9 in the breaker. Its the third straight defeat in the 16s for Parrilla at the hands of Herrera, but she keeps getting closer. – #19 Maldonado fared well against #3 Maria Jose Vargas Parada losing in two 9,10. A good showing for the 20-yr old. – #11 Flores got the biggest (only) upset of the round, topping #6 Natalia Mendez Erlwein in two. Its the 2nd year in a row they’ve met in this event … and the 2nd year in a row Flores upset the Argentinian. – #7 Nancy Enriquez was stretched to a tiebreaker by #10 Brenda Laime Jalil before advancing. Laime continues to make main events, solidifying her ranking in the 12-16 range, but she has yet to have a break through win.
In the quarters: – #1 Paola Longoria took out #8 Amaya 8,9 to advance. – #12 Mejia continued her upsetting ways, taking out #4 Herrera in two games and perhaps making a statement about the current heirarchy on the tour. – #3 Vargas advanced in two straight over 18U champ Flores. – #2 Samantha Salas Solis blitzed past #7 Enriquez 1,6.
In the semis; two heavyweight battles and two interesting matches: – #1 Longoria and #12 Mejia were neck and neck in game one, with Longoria pulling out a close one, then she broke away in game two to advance 13,5. – #3 Vargas got just her 3rd pro win over Salas in a tense, back and forth 11-9 tiebreaker win.
In the final, Vargas mounted a furious comeback in Game 1 but fell slightly short, then Longoria took over in game 2 to win her namesake title 13,6.
The two top Mexican teams advanced to the final as #1 and #3 seeds. #3 Mejia/Herrera downed the #2 Argentinian national team of Vargas/Mendez 12,13 to advance.
The final was a rematch of several major events in the last couple of years (these are all Finals); – 2016 US Open – 2017 Chihuahua Pro stop – 2018 Battle at the Alamo – 2018 World Doubles – 2018 Mexican Worlds selection – 2018 Paola Longoria Experience – 2018 US Open – 2019 Mexican Nationals – 2019 Kansas City pro stop.
The #1 team had won every one of these finals matchups save for the 2018 Worlds selection event.
On this day though, the younger team of Herrera/Mejia stuck with the hard-hitting veteran team, mounted a solid comeback in game 2 after letting game 1 slip away, then just out-shot the #1 team behind really solid serving from Herrera and took the title.
After an incredibly busy summer of events, the pro racquetball season is back. Welcome to the 2019-20 season; first up; the LPRT kicks off with a Grand Slam event; the Paola Longoria Experience in her home town of San Luis Potosi, SL, Mexico1
22 pros are in SLP for this event; lets take a look at the draws.
The top 8 players are here, setting up some frequently seen possible quarter finals from last season. We’re missing the 9th, 10th, and 11th ranked players ( Frederique LambertAdriana Riveros and Gaby Martinez), which has elevated Masiel Rivera Oporto all the way to a 9th seed. Its an odd absence for Riveros, who only missed three events in the last two seasons.
Lets preview the draw;
Interesting play-in/round of 32 matches: – #16/#17 Mexican lefty youngster Monserrat Perez Hellman takes on Guatemalan international Maria Renee Rodriguez, who is fresh off of a solid Pan Am Games showing (she and Martinez made the women’s doubles final). I like MRR here. – #12 Montse Mejia gets a chance to avoid the #1 seed in a pro event for the first time in a while, and starts out playing country-woman Carolina Rivera in the opener. – #14 Sheryl Lotts made the trip and gets an early test against another young Mexican player Denisse Maldonado. – #11 Ana Laura Flores , the reigning Mexican 18U champ, takes on the 2018 Mexican 14U champ Daniela Rico in a generational junior battle. – #15 Veteran Susy Acosta takes on a player nearly half her age in #18 Erin Rivera.
Possible Round of 16 matches of note: – #8 Amaya Cris vs #9 Rivera: these two played at the final LPRT stop of last season, a 4-game win for Amaya, who has not stopped traveling or playing this summer. I like Amaya here to advance. – #5 Rhonda Rajsich vs #12 Mejia: they just played each other in LIma, a beat-down by Rajsich. But this is a great opportunity for Mejia (who has the talent to challenge for the top) to make a run. Will she learn from her Pan Am Games early exit? – #4 Alexandra Herrera vs #13 Jessica Parrilla: Herrera has knocked Parrilla out in the round of 16 in both her top-level tournaments back so far, and likely does it again here. Despite it being more than a year removed from her knee injury, Parrilla still is not back to top form.
Projecting the Quarters: i like the top 8 seeds to advance with a lot of chalk here on out. – #1 Paola Longoria vs #8 Amaya: Longoria will be looking to win her namesake tournament as she did last year to kick off the season. – #4 Herrera vs #5 Rajsich: Alexandra finally broke her losing streak to Rajsich at the end of last pro season, while Rajsich is coming off a long two week period in Lima (where, to be fair, Herrera also was … but was merely on the Mexican team and did not play). I like Herrera here. – #3 Maria Jose Vargas Parada vs #6 Natalia Mendez; as I frequently noted last spring, these two long-time Argentinian team-mates and doubles partners had not never met, now cannot stop facing each other. Vargas has never lost to Mendez, and I don’t see that starting here. – #2 Samantha Salas Solis vs #7 Nancy Enriquez: If Enriquez does not slip up against up-and-comer Brenda Laime Jalil, she’ll fall at this stage. Salas was shut out of the Mexican singles team at the Pan Ams, but raced to the doubles gold with Longoria.
Semis and Finals: Longoria over Herrera, Salas over Vargas, and Longoria over Salas, This was the semis and finals of the final LPRT event from last season, and I think they pick right back up where they left off.
———————- Doubles preview:
10 teams here; I like the top two Mexican teams of Longoria/Salas and Mejia/Herrera to meet in the final, with the Pan Am Gold medalists to take another title.
———————–
Reminder: LPRT has a new scoring system, and i’ll put up a post this weekend with a look back at the scoring systems used by the ladies pro tour over the years.
In the Semis; – Landa and Natera battled in a close game 1, then Landa pulled away to take game two 15-3 and advance to the final of his namesake tourney. – Cardona took two close games from Garay 13,12 to “upset” his 2nd straight seeded player and advance to the final.
In the Final: – Cardona took the first game, then Landa took over, beating his frequent Juarez club playing partner (12),5,6 to win the singles title in his name sake event. Not a bad showing for Cardona, who has stepped back from competitive play but still remains a dangerous player in every draw he enters. For Landa, two solid wins over tough opponents and a good warmup for the new season coming.
————————
In Men’s Doubles: – #1 seeds Landa/Cardona were upset in the semis by #4 Estrada/Ochoa in a tiebreaker. – #2 Natera/Garay downed #6 seeds (who got a walkover over #3 seeded team in the qtrs) Jose Martinez / Manuel Villarreal: to advance to the final.
In a good final entirely consisting of solid Mexican players who rarely feature in USA domestic IRT events, Estrada and Ochoa blasted their way to a win over Natera/Garay.
————————- Next up; the start of the 2019-20 pro season with the LPRT heading to San Luis Potosi.
Like last week’s event in SLP, there’s a solid Men’s Pro draw (18 players). its also an IRT sanctioned event; a Tier 2, meaning the winner does get a somewhat significant number of rankings points (120 points).
——————- Men’s Pro Singles draw
Lets pick up a preview at the quarter-final levels, given that it seems unlikely to have any upsets prior to that stage.
Projected Quarters: – #1 Alex Landalikely faces #8 Ruben Estrada, brother of Javier (who is also in the draw). Ruben was a force in Junior racquetball in the early 2000s, winning multiple Junior world titles but an accident in the late 2008-early 2009 time-frame derailed his promising career. He returned to pro racquetball in 2015 and has played sporadically since.
– #4 Ernesto Ochoavs #5 Alan Natera Chavez; a great match-up between two dark horses in pro racquetball. Natera’s win over reigning Pan Am Games champ Rodrigo Montoya Solís earlier this year at Mexican Nationals represents the potential of his game. They’ve played before and I favor Natera here.
– #3 Javier Estrada vs #6 Alex Cardona: a tough one to predict, given that Cardona has really stepped back in his pro touring. I’m going to predict Cardona gets the upset here.
– #2 Eduardo Garay Rodriguez vs #7 Polo Gutiérrez; I can’t wait to see what Polo has left in the tank after a long international career and having recovered from an arm injury. I suspect Garay is the favorite here.
Projected Semis: – Landa vs Natera: here’s some of the players Natera has beaten this year: Montoya, Estrada, Cardona, Gerardo Franco, Sebastian Franco and Charlie Pratt. That’s a lot of talented players. This is no cake walk for Landa, who I think should advance in a breaker but don’t be surprised by an upset. – Garay vs Cardona: Despite Garay’s resume of recent accomplishments, i still like Cardona here.
Finals: Landa over his doubles partner Cardona in a rematch of their every tuesday night league night.
——————- They’re also playing doubles at the events; 7 teams. The top seed is Landa/Cardona, the 2nd seed is the solid Garay/Natera team (who made the finals last weekend). Also in the Mix is the Ochoa/Estrada team.
I like the draw to go chalk; both Cardona and Landa are solid doubles players.
While the Pan American Games team events were wrapping up last weekend, there was a nice little Tier 5 IRT event happening in San Luis Potosi, SL Mexico with some top Mexican players. Here’s a quick wrap-up of the Men’s and Women’s draws.
Men’s Singles: there was a 20-man IRT pro draw, with the top 8 being household names to IRT regular fans. There were no upsets to the quarters, so we’ll pick up the draw review there.
– #1 Andree Parrilla topped #8 Alan Natera Chavez in a tie-breaker. As is often the case with Natera, he’s under-seeded in these events and has good wins on his resume and stretched the top seed in an early round. – #4 Eduardo Garay Rodriguez topped #5 Jordy Alonso in two tight games 13,11. Alonso has been playing well lately but couldn’t top Garay on this day. – #3 Eduardo Portillo Rendon topped #6 Ernesto Ochoa in a tiebreaker, a great win against a dangerous opponent. – #7 Javier Estrada took out #2 Gerardo Franco Gonzalez in a tiebreaker, a tough match-up in the quarters for Franco.
In the semis:
– #1 Parrilla outlasted Garay in two – #3 Portillo got a great win, trouncing Estrada 2,7
In the final, Parrilla dominated his younger countryman, winning the title 4,9.
Parrilla gets a nice jump start to the season; the odds of this tier 5 factoring in the 2019-20 race seem pretty small; Parrilla gets just 30 rankings points for winning a Tier 5 … he’ll get three times that just for showing up in the first Tier 1 next month.
—————
Women’s Singles
The Women’s Open draw featured a smaller draw of mostly younger Mexican women and included 3 recent Mexican 18U junior national champs. The draw when chalk to the semis….
In the final, Flores came back from a game one deficit to trounce Parrilla in the 2nd and 3rd games to take the title.
—————
In the Men’s pro Doubles: Parrilla & Portillo beat Natera and Garay in the Men’s doubles final.
Fun note: it was a Parrilla family affair, with father, son and daughter all competing. Fabian Parrilla
——————–
Next up on the racquetball calendar: – The Alex LandaTier 2 in Juarez this coming W/E – the first LPRT event of the season, the Paola Longoria Grand Slam in San Luis Potosi – then, after a break, the International Racquetball Tour slate begins with the season opener in Atlanta while the @LPRT heads to my home state of Virginia for an event in Chesapeake at the home club of former top touring pro Malia Kamahoahoa Bailey…. and the hometown of reigning US national champ Kelani Lawrence.
can’t wait to get started in on the new pro seasons!
In the wake of the Mexican Junior Nationals event a few weeks ago, I took some time to do some data loading so that the “matrix” reports I have showing all winners for all age divisions for all of time looked a bit better.
This is a quick notification post to rball fans to inform you of some data loading for Mexican Junior data, if you were interested.
You can also pull down the full match results for any year from the Event list in the Juniors database. I generally only put in the “older” age groups of full results (14s sometimes, 16s and 18s) and just note the final for the younger groups. Furthermore, there’s no Double Elimination results in the database; most of these events are DE.
Mexican Junior events have been a bit tough to keep track of; in any given year the US and Canada have “one” Junior National event. Mexico meanwhile has a Junior Olympics event (which sometimes takes “liberties” with the age groups, or skips them altogether), a conventional Junior Nationals, and even “World Selection events” that supersede the results of nationals. So as it turned out … some of the results I had previously for “Mexican Junior Nationals” were actually from the Junior Olympics events. I’ve now cleaned all that up.
We have online data for Mexican Jr Nationals for at least all winners from 2012-present now, thanks to some archive.org work. The earliest years generally only have winners posted, even for the older divisions. Hopefully, I havn’t made any mistakes; if anyone sees data entry errors please let me know.
Thanks to Ryan Rodgers who hooked me up with 2013 data so I could finish the data entry.
——————–
From here … in order to fully populate the Mexican Junior data, I need help from the Association. @Federación Federación Mexicana de Raquetbol if you’re reading this, do you have past records or past draw sheets I can leverage to do data entry? Do you have a list of at least the winners of past Junior championships?
Next up, i’ll do some similar work for Canadian juniors.
Landa is excluded from the Mexican team heading to Lima.
Over the past week or so, we found out through various forums that the Mexican National teams for the Pan Am Games were named in the past few days … and to say that the selection on the men’s side is “curious” would be an understatement.
As with the USA, the Mexican delegation’s team size was lowered to be just 3 players on the Men’s side due to results at the Pan American Racquetball Championships (PARC) earlier this year. Which means that, like with the USA leaving off National singles finalist David Horn , that it was likely that a significant Mexican singles player would be left out.
The obvious and (frankly) ridiculous omission is Alex Landa. Landa WON Mexican National singles earlier this year. So your reigning National singles champ, an event that exists to decide who represents your country in international events … is being ignored when determining the team playing in an international event.
Apparently, the Mexican federation used the results of its singles players at the PARC event to chose its singles representative. In a response to the uproar, the FMR president claims to have informed the players ahead of PARCs that their results would matter, this despite the entry form for Mexican National Singles in 2019 specifically stating that the winner and finalist of singles would represent Mexico at both PARCs and the Pan Am Games.
The team of Mar/Montoya won Mexican National doubles, so they’re a natural doubles pairing. Montoya likely plays the second singles spot, given that he was the 2018 Mexican national singles champ and then subsequently won 2018 Worlds. Of course, Mar himself is no singles slouch; he was the 2017 National singles champ and has represented Mexico well in international events in limited experience. So we’ll have to wait and see who takes the #2 singles spot for Mexico (note: it seems it will be Montoya playing #2 singles based on press releases).
But to this outside observer, it seems like the Mexican Federation went out of its way to find the one plausible scenario where they could make an argument to exclude Landa at the benefit of Beltran. Not surprisingly, Landa took to social media, and the story was picked up by numerous media outlets, and (if i’m reading the posts correctly), Landa may be summarily quitting the Mexican national team altogether and exercising his dual citizenship option to begin playing for the USA. More to follow.
——————– On the Women’s side, there’s also some drama, but not nearly as bad as omitting the sitting singles national champ. The Mexican women’s team won both singles and doubles at PARC, giving them 4 team members in Lima. I’m inferring the team based on press releases/official posts on facebook pages. We know … – Paola Longoria – Samantha Salas Solis – Montse Mejia – Alexandra Herrera
Are named for Lima. But … by insider accounts, Longoria & Mejia will play singles, while Longoria/Salas together will play doubles, which leaves Herrera … named to the team and traveling to Peru only to sit and watch? Its unclear.
The “drama” on the women’s side? Despite the fact that Mejia beat Longoria to win Mexican National singles final earlier this year, Longoria will play #1 seed in Lima … by virtue of finishing higher at PARCs than Mejia. The FMR is using the same logic exercised to omit Landa in order to seed Longoria higher than the player who topped her at Nationals. Furthermore, Salas has lodged criticism in various forums that she was passed over, given her dominant position on the pro tour this season (and she’s not wrong … but lost to Mejia at Nationals at an inopportune time).
Longoria & Salas are the natural doubles representatives; they won Mexican National doubles and have a slew of international titles together, and this will apparently be the sole event Salas enters.
——————– However it turns out, and who ever plays, you have to think the Mexican contingent is favorites to take home a slew of medals across the board. ——————–
The Pan Am games starts 7/26/19 and runs through 8/11/19. Follow along at http://www.internationalracquetball.com/ , and follow @international racquetball federation on Facebook for live streaming throughout.
