TENNIS in DEPTH.

The USTA announced the names of eight boys and eight girls who have been offered wild card entries into the 2009 US Open boys’ and girls’ singles championships. The US Open Junior Championships will be played September 6–13 at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, N.Y.

Three 2009 USTA National Champions were granted wild card entries – Chase Buchanan (USTA Boys’ 18s), Gonzales Austin (USTA Boys’ 16s), Lauren Davis (USTA Girls’ 16s) – in addition to runner-up Jack Sock (USTA Boys’ 16s) and 2008 USTA Girls’ 18s winner Gail Brodsky.

US Open Boys’ Main Draw Wild Card Recipients

Gonzales Austin (16, Miami)

Chase Buchanan (18, New Albany, Ohio)

Bjorn Fratangelo (16, Pittsburgh)

Dennis Novikov (15, Boca Raton, Fla.)

Junior Ore (16, Gaithersburg, Md.)

Jack Sock (16, Lincoln, Neb.)

Raymond Sarmiento (17, Fontana, Calif.)

Johannes (Bob) Van Overbeek (17, Boca Raton, Fla.)

US Open Girls’ Main Draw Wild Card Recipients

Julia Boserup (17, Boca Raton, Fla.)

Gail Brodsky (18, Brooklyn, N.Y.)

Jacqueline Cako (17, Brier, Wash.)

Alexandra Cercone (17, Seminole, Fla.)

Lauren Davis (15, Gates Mills, Ohio)

Ester Goldfeld (16, Brooklyn, N.Y.)

Grace Min (15, Duluth, Ga.)

Asia Muhammad (18, Henderson, Nev.)

In addition to the main draw wild cards, the USTA has also announced the names of five boys and five girls who have been offered wild card entries into the junior qualifying tournament, which will be played September 4-5.

Boys’ qualifying wild cards have been offered to Marcos Giron (16, Thousand Oaks, Calif.), Alexios Halebian (15, Glendale, Calif.), Mitchell Krueger (15, Aledo, Texas), Nathan Pasha (17, Atlanta) and Shane Vinsant (15, Keller, Texas). Girls’ qualifying wild cards have been offered to Courtney Dolehide (17, Hinsdale, Ill.), Victoria Duval (13, Bradenton, Fla.), Ellen Tsay (15, Pleasanton, Calif.), Chanelle Van Nguyen (15, Coconut Grove, Fla.) and Sachia Vickery (14, Miramar, Fla.). One additional wild card into each of the qualifying draws will be announced at a later time.

Three US Open Junior Champions – Andy Roddick (2000), Lindsay Davenport (1992) and Stefan Edberg (1983) – went on to win the US Open singles title, as did junior runners-up Roger Federer (1998), Boris Becker (1984), Svetlana Kuznetsova (2001) and Martina Hingis (1994).

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Michelle LARCHER DE BRITO joins the Mouratoglou Tennis AcademyA new world talent on the women’s professional tennis tour becomes a part of the Academy: the young Portuguese Michelle Larcher de Brito, 16 years-old and already in the top 100 WTA.

She reached the Top 100 WTA in June 2009, climbing up to the 76th world position, thanks to good performances on the Grand Slams and major tournaments, notably at Roland Garros 2009 where she qualified and reached the 3rd round.

Michelle already has claimed a number of victories over players in the Top 20, such as Jie ZHENG, Flavia PENNETTA and Agnieszka RADWANSKA. At only 16, she is by far the youngest player inside the Top 200 WTA.

Michelle Larcher de Brito will be part of the group of Elite Pros at the Mouratoglou Tennis Academy, set up with some of the world’s most promising tennis players. She will be trained by her father Antonio Larcher de Brito who has been supervising her since the age of 4. Both will be assisted by a dedicated team which will monitor the physical preparation, provide high calibre sparring and during certain periods additional expert coaching advise.

Michelle will join Anastasia PAVLYUCHENKOVA and Grigor DIMITROV in the “Elite Team” group.

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Pat Cash successfully defended his singles title at the $150,000 Hall of Fame Champions Cup defeating Jim Courier 6-3, 6-4 Sunday in the championship match at the International Tennis Hall of Fame. The tournament victory was Cash’s second career title on the Outback Champions Series, the global tennis circuit for champions tennis players age 30 and over, and earned the 1987 Wimbledon champion $60,000. Cash’s tournament win at Newport last year was also over Courier in the final by the exact 6-3, 6-4 score line.

“I’ve been lucky this week,” said Cash. “I got a few lucky breaks today and you need that to beat these guys, who are all champions. The great thing about this tour, the Outback Champions Series, is that it is serious tennis. We get out there and you can see how hard we’re trying, but it’s also fun,”

Cash is regarded as one of the best serve-and-volley and grass-court players in tennis over the last 30 years. In addition to his 1987 Wimbledon title, Cash was a singles finalist on grass at the 1987 Australian Open. The 44-year-old Australian was the lone Wimbledon singles champion in the eight-player Newport field and was most comfortable on the grass courts at the International Tennis Hall of Fame all week.

“I wouldn’t say I grew up on the grass-court but I have played a lot of grass-court tennis,” said Cash. “It’s natural for me to play this style of game. It’s easy. I don’t have to think about it. I just serve and volley. I’m not smart enough to work out a game tactic against Jim so I just kind of keep serving and running to the net.”

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It wasn’t the greatest women’s tennis match of the season. Not with Elena Dementieva and Maria Sharapova combining for two aces and 17 double faults and having to defend 22 break points between them.

But this final in Toronto had my juices flowing. The great defense and damn-the-torpedoes aggression was thoroughly enjoyable and, when it was over and the Russian Russian — Dementieva — had prevailed over the American Russian — by 6-4, 6-3, it was time to fast forward a week to the U.S. Open and estimate whether either of these women could win it.

First, Dementieva. Can she win her first Grand Slam title? She’s twice been a Slam runner-up — at the French Open and U.S. Open. She’s also playing the best tennis of her career with four semifinal finishes in her last five Slams (plus a third-round punchout at this year’s French). The way she’s played the last two weeks, at Cincinnati and in Canada, makes her look awfully good, and she looked spectacular beating Serena Williams in the Toronto semis. Her movement and hitting against Sharapova this afternoon was audacious.

I’ve seen Elena look this beautiful before, hitting off the ground, and I wish you could freeze frame the way she hits her running forehands. Not only does she get to the ball, but she has an exquisitely fluid motion as she rotates her body to hit, so that rather than grasping at the ball, she gets low, on balance and her feet somehow have turned forward in a perfect hitting posture. Few players on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour have the balance she possesses on her groundies.

In this final, she was firing on 16 cylinders. But as wonderful as she played, I cannot bring myself to believe she can win the U.S. Open. As good as she looked in this tournament, my intuition tells me it ain’t happening for her in New York. She’ll go down in WTA history as one of the finest players never to win a Slam.

And now, Sharapova. Even with this loss, you can see her game coming together and, with three major titles and the confidence that comes with those triumphs, that makes her a serious threat in New York. . . IF she can just pull that serve together.

This was Maria’s 29th (22-7) match since she returned to the tour a little over three months ago following shoulder surgery and a long rehabilitation period. She’s had to redesign her serve to accommodate her shoulder and it’s better than it was two weeks ago, when she slugged 61 double faults at Los Angeles.

At the Canadian Open, in six matches, she had 17 aces, 57 double faults, but 17 of them came in one horrendous performance against Sybille Bammer in the second round. Here’s the rest of the litany: 5 doubles vs. Nadia Petrova in the first round, 5 against Vera Zvonareva in the third, 8 vs. Agnieszka Radwanska in the quarters, 12 vs. Alisa Kleybanova in the semis and 10 today vs. Dementieva.

OK, not good. But, on balance, better than L.A. Her first serve percentage is high, an average of around 64 percent for the tournament, but the second serve continues to get her into trouble. She faced 55 break points at Toronto, winning 24 of them, and Dementieva had 15 break point opportunities in the final.

One of the best things that has happened to Maria is that she’s having tough draws, and that has sped up her return to form. Look at Toronto, where the lowest ranked of her six opponents was No. 36 Kleybanova. She defeated three top 20s in No. 7 Zvonareva, No. 12 Petrova and No. 14 Radwanska.

Still, everything is going to come down to her serve. IIf she can’t make further inroads into her serving, she’s not winning the Open. If she does, she has a good chance, because the rest of her game looks awfully good. I believe her movement is better today than it was before the shoulder injury, but that could be because she’s now 22 years old and has grown into her body, losing that awkwardness athletes often feel when they’re tall as teenagers.

Aggressivenes? Sharapova is playing super-attacking tennis from the baseline and you can see on selected points that she’s gotten better making the transition from the baseline to the net. It’s all good. All except the serve.

But, of course, these are not the only two suspects to win the Open. The Williams sisters are right there and you’d have to feel that Serena is playing more consistent tennis right now than Venus. Except, of course, something mysterious happens when these two get to a hardcourt or grass Slam. The stakes are higher and something extra kicks in with both of them.

Dinara Safina, who will be seeded No. 1? She wouldn’t be among my top five favorites. If you were looking for a darkhorse, why not Kim Clijsters, who has the same problem Sharapova had two months ago. She needs matches.

What will be intriguing is that neither Sharapova, who will rise to about No. 38 when the new rankings are out Monday, nor Clijsters will be seeded, and that means a potential Williams-Sharapova or Dementieva-Clijsters match in the first round. Or second or third.

Suddenly, the WTA, which seemed moribund a couple weeks ago, is alive and well again. This is going to be a great Open.

Charles Bricker can be reached at bricker@tennisnews.com

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Anna Chakvetadze sprung the first major surprise in the first round of the Pilot Pen tournament in Connecticut, ousting fourth seed Nadia Petrova.

Petrova started in the most emphatic fashion, taking the first set against her unseeded Russian compatriot 6-0.

But Chakvetadze hit back to take the next two sets, 7-6(4) 6-4 to progress.

Sybille Bammer is also through in the women’s draw, beating Spain’s Anabel Medina Garragues 7-5 6-4, as is Alona Bondarenko, who saw off Meghann Shaughnessy 4-6 6-3 7-5.

In the men’s first round American Taylor Dent surprised Ivan Ljubicic to make the next stage.

Dent, the world number 202 eased his way past the Croat 6-3 6-4.

Paul Capdeville beat Jarko Nieminen 7-5 6-3, Leonardo Mayer bested Denis Istomin 6-2 6-4 and Florent Serra 6-3 6-3.

Janko Tipsarevic is through after Fabio Fognini forced retirement and Marc Gicquel is through having cruised past Martin Vassallo Arguello.

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Elena Dementieva’s U.S. Open tuneup was an overwhelming success. The No. 4 seed overcame an ugly first set to beat Maria Sharapova 6-4, 6-3 on Sunday in the final of the Rogers Cup. Dementieva’s steady play was too much for an error-prone Sharapova to handle in the first all-Russian final in tournament history.

A hardcourt specialist, Dementieva dominated No. 2 Serena Williams in the semifinal, and had a similarly easy time against former No. 1 Sharapova as she prepares for the U.S. Open, which gets underway Aug. 31.

Playing in her first final since a serious shoulder injury, Sharapova committed 10 double faults and had trouble with even the most routine shots.

Both players fought breezy conditions in front of a packed house at the Rexall Centre during a sloppy first set. It featured eight service breaks, 14 double faults and a number of easy shots hit long, or drilled into the net.

Dementieva went ahead 4-1 on the strength of two breaks – the first aided by three Sharapova double faults. But Sharapova saved three break points in the next game to hold serve, and closed within 4-3 when Dementieva double faulted to lose her service game.

Both players traded breaks before Dementieva finally finished things off, converting her third set point when Sharapova hit a forehand into the net.

The second set was a little tamer, with both players holding serve until the sixth game. Sharapova fought off two break points but fired a forehand into the net on the third to hand Dementieva a 4-2 lead.

That was all Dementieva needed, as she held serve throughout and clinched her 14th career WTA Tour title when Sharapova’s drop shot fell into the net on the third championship point.

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Roger Federer claimed his third Cincinnati Masters title with a 6-1 7-5 victory over Novak Djokovic in today’s final.

Federer, who beat defending champion Andy Murray 6-2 7-6 (10/8) in the semi-finals, confirmed his status as heavy favourite for the US Open with an outstanding performance.

It was his 16th Masters Series title – his first as a father – and apart from Djokovic’s fightback early in the second set he was never troubled.

The world number one and defending Wimbledon, French and US Open champion took his total career prize money to US dollars 50million with today’s triumph.

Federer, seeking to become the fourth player to win at least three titles in Cincinnati in the Open era, hardly broke sweat as he put Djokovic to the sword in the opening set.

However, he encountered far stiffer resistance early in the second set as Djokovic raced into a 3-0 lead, breaking in the second game.

But the Swiss halted the fightback dead in its tracks by rattling off three successive winning games to level 3-3.

At 5-5 Djokovic was refusing to raise the white flag but was clearly running out of ideas, producing a poorly executed drop-shot to give his opponent advantage and then the game when he fired long.

Serving for the match, Federer did not drop a single point to complete the perfect warm-up for the US Open which begins a week tomorrow.

“The whole week has been great to me. Congratulations to Novak, he had a great tournament,” Federer told Sky Sports.

“I had twin girls a month ago. It’s been an unbelievable summer for me – in my personal life and on the tennis court.

“I couldn’t be more happy right now. I didn’t know if I’d be able to play here because of Myla and Charlene.

“Thanks to them coming earlier – it was good timing! I look forward to coming back here next year.”

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