Smyczek ends Young's bid for NorCal sweep

Tim Smyczek, shown in last week's Sacramento Challeng-
er, ended Donald Young's winning streak at 12 matches.
Photo by Paul Bauman

   Donald Young's bid for a Northern California Challenger sweep ended Friday at the hands of a familiar face.
   Second-seeded Tim Smyczek subdued the seventh-seeded Young, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 in the quarterfinals of the $100,000 First Republic Bank Tiburon Challenger at the Tiburon Peninsula Club.
   Young, a 24-year-old left-hander from Atlanta, had beaten Smyczek, 25, of Tampa, Fla., in the semifinals of the Napa Challenger and the final of the Sacramento Challenger in the past two weeks.
   The 5-foot-9 (1.75-meter) Smyczek stopped Young's winning streak at 12 matches, but Young leads the series 8-5. That includes Smyczek's victory in a 2011 USTA playoff for a wild card into the French Open.
   Smyczek, ranked a career-high No. 91 in the world, will play unseeded Peter Polansky of Canada in the semifinals. Polansky, ranked No. 222, dispatched unseeded Tennys Sandgren of Gallatin, Tenn., 6-4, 6-3.
   Smyczek defeated Polansky 6-4, 6-2 in the second round of the 2010 Rimouski (Quebec) Challenger in their only meeting.
   In today's other semifinal, top-seeded Denis Kudla of Boca Raton, Fla, will meet third-seeded Matthew Ebden of Australia.
   Kudla, ranked No. 97, held off Australian left-hander John-Patrick Smith 6-4, 7-5 after trailing 3-0 in the first set. Ebden, ranked No. 116 after reaching a career-high No. 61 last October, topped 20-year-old countryman Benjamin Mitchell 6-4, 7-6 (3).
   Ebden is 1-0 against Kudla, winning 6-3, 7-5 two weeks ago in the Napa quarterfinals.
   Following are links to the Tiburon singles and doubles draws and today's schedule:
   http://assets.usta.com/assets/1/15/singles_draw293.PDF
   http://assets.usta.com/assets/1/15/doubles_draw294.PDF
   http://assets.usta.com/assets/1/15/schedule294.PDF