Six Seeds Out in Opening Round of USTA/ITA Indoor Intercollegiate Championships; Brady Keeps AO Wild Card Hopes Alive; Opelka into Quarterfinals in Birmingham Futures

With only 32 players in the singles draws, the USTA/ITA National Indoor Intercollegiate Championships are bound to have first round upsets, and that was the case today, with five of the eight seeds in the men's singles and the No. 3 seed in the women's singles already out.

Top women's seeds Jamie Loeb of North Carolina and Chanelle Van Nguyen of UCLA advanced in straight sets, as did men's top seeds Sebastian Stiefelmeyer of Louisville and Yannick Hanfmann of Southern Cal.

But both No. 3 seeds were sent to the consolation draw, with UCLA's Mackenzie McDonald falling to Amerigo Contini of Virginia Tech 6-3, 1-6, 6-4 and North Carolina's Hayley Carter losing to Rice's Natalie Beazant 7-6(2), 6-4.

In addition to McDonald, No. 4 seed Julian Lenz of Baylor, the ITA preseason No. 1, lost, going out to Gonzales Austin of Vanderbilt 6-4, 6-4. No. 5 seed Romain Bogaerts of Wake Forest fell to Nathan Pasha of Georgia, No. 7 seed Cameron Norrie of TCU lost to Dominik Koepfer of Tulane 6-4, 6-7(7), 6-3 and No. 8 seed Soren Hess-Olesen of Texas was replaced in the draw by alternate Denis Nguyen of Harvard when Hess-Olesen suffered a minor injury in practice prior to his match.

The live scoring has been error-prone and often not timely, but the USTA's Pat Mitsch is doing a live chat throughout the tournament, and he is much more reliable when it comes to scores and results. Follow along here beginning at 9 a.m. Friday.

For complete results, see the ITA tournament page.

UCLA sophomore Jennifer Brady kept her hopes for the Australian Open wild card alive today at the $50,000 Captiva Island Florida Pro Circuit event. Brady defeated No. 6 seed Irina Falconi, who had beaten her on Sunday in the $50,000 New Braunfels final, 6-4, 6-4 in the second round and will play Canada's Gabriela Dabrowski in the quarterfinals. The unseeded Dabrowski won the $50,000 tournament in Toronto last week.  Brady would need to win the tournament this week to pass Falconi, who has her two best results as a semifinal and a title, to earn the USTA's reciprocal wild card.  Unseeded Louisa Chirico and Sachia Vickery also advanced to the quarterfinals, with Chirico beating top seed Grace Min 7-6(5), 5-7, 7-5 and Vickery defeating No. 8 seed Mariana Duque Marino of Colombia 6-1, 4-6, 7-6(3).

At the Knoxville Challenger, Denis Kudla took the lead in the men's wild card race, defeating Taro Daniel of Japan 7-6(4), 6-3, with other contenders Alex Kuznetsov, Tennys Sandgren and Michael Russell losing. Tim Smyczek, the No. 5 seed, beat Jared Donaldson 6-0, 6-4 so he has a chance to make a move in the wild card race this week. There is one more Challenger for the men that counts in the race next week in Champaign.

At the $10,000 Birmingham Futures, wild card Reilly Opelka defeated friend and fellow 17-year-old Alex Rybakov 6-4, 6-4 to advance to his second career Futures quarterfinal.  He will play qualifier Julio Peralta of Chile, who beat Deiton Baughman 6-3, 6-2.  Louisiana-Lafayette junior Jake Wynan has picked up his first ATP points this week, with the 20-year-old Australian qualifier set to face No. 3 seed and former Florida State star Jean Yves Aubone in the quarterfinals. Miami freshman Piotr Lomacki also reached the quarterfinals, where he'll face unseeded 18-year-old Naoki Nakagawa of Japan.

Rybakov has reached the doubles final with former Ole Miss star Catalin Gard of Romania.