Black Tennis Pros

Well folks, as great as it would have been to see both Donald Young and Scoville Jenkins try and make a deep run at the U. S. Open, alas, 'twas not to be.

On Saturday when I sat down and took a long look at the final main draw, I was floored when I saw what unfortunate luck Scoville Jenkins had in getting Roger Federer as his first round opponent. Yes, it is an honor to play Roger, but the likelihood is, you're not going to beat him. And Jenkins did not today. He did make a pretty good show, but Federer took him out in straight sets.

As for 18-year old Donald Young however, he put on a worthy performance in his 6-7 (2), 6-3, 6-2, 6-3 victory over Australian Chris Guccione.

Young's ATP Tour luck had not been running so good prior to the Pilot Pen Tournament. "Obviously that goes through your mind when you lose 11 in a row," Young said of his ATP losing streak. "But I felt like...I would definitely win at least one. I knew I would get one. Sooner or later you don't play all the top players, you get to play some of the lower ranked players also. It was definitely different (today). I had won my first match. I wasn't 0-for-anything. I had a win. It was a big confidence booster."

"You have to be able to put the ball away sometimes," Young said. "But it throws people off when you can slice, drop shot, get to a lot of balls, just make 'em play."

I've seen Young get a real frustrated look on his face after blowing a point, but he says that he's largely in control of his emotions, but it doesn't always appear so. "(I'm) like a perfectionist, but no one can be perfect," he said. "I don't like to miss anything, but that's not the way it goes. I'm happy, but maybe not showing it, because I don't want to show it too early and end up losing."

Against Guccione today Young had a 61% serve rate to 63%, he equally served 9 aces, and had 1 less service fault than Guccione at 3.

See ya in the second round Donald Young!

As for Scoville Jenkins, 21, he came into the match ranked No. 320, and even with that discrepancy in achievement level, acquitted himself well. He served big, hit hard and competed well. But he has many miles to go before he'll be able to do sufficient damage to beat a player the stature of Federer.

Jenkins had a higher service rate than Federer at 67% to 60%, he had 9 aces to Federer's 13, and 7 double faults to 2. Jenkins unforced errors were 31 to Fededer's 12 and the score of 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 showed it.

After 1 hour 32 minutes at least Jenkins still had a wonderful attitude about playing the world No. 1. I look forward to seeing more of Jenkins in play the rest of the year.