SAN DIEGO (AP) — Fifteen-year-old CiCi Bellis won the USTA Girls’ 18s National Championship on Saturday to earn a main-draw wild card into the U.S. Open, beating 16-year-old Tornado Alicia Black 6-3, 6-1.
Bellis, the Atherton player who is the second-ranked junior in the world, is the youngest USTA Girls’ 18s national champion since Lindsay Davenport also won at 15 in 1991.
Black is from Boca Raton, Florida.
Bellis needed 1 hour, 45 minutes to beat Black, who took a 3-0 lead in the first set. Bellis won six straight games to close out the set at Barnes Tennis Center.
In the second, Bellis led 3-0 before Black held serve to win her only game of the set. Bellis closed out the victory with a forehand winner on her second match point.
Black earned a wild card into the U.S. Open qualifying. She reached last year’s girls’ singles final at the Open and made the Wimbledon girls’ quarterfinals this summer.
In the doubles final, top-seeded Louisa Chirico of Harrison, New York, and Katerina Stewart of Coral Gables, Florida, beat Josie Kuhlman of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, and Kaitlyn McCarthy of Cary, North Carolina, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3. Chirico and Stewart earned a wild card into the doubles draw at the U.S. Open.
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