Jada Hart and Ena Shibahara were already national champions, but now they can put a Juniors Grand Slam title under their belts.
All it took was fending off a one-set deficit and a third set match point.
Hart and Shibahara, who also won the 18’s girls’ doubles title at the USTA National Championships in August, broke their opponents Kayla Day and class of 2017 commit Caroline Dolehide twice in the second set to tie the match at a set apiece. Then in a third set super tiebreaker, the incoming freshmen found themselves down 9-10 but they won four of the next five points to clinch the U.S. Open juniors girls’ doubles championship.
The girls’ doubles champions also competed in the women’s doubles draw but lost in the first round to seventh-seeded Sania Mirza and Barbora Strycova.
In the juniors bracket, Hart and Shibahara upset several seeded teams en route to the final, including a straight-sets victory over the top-seeded duo of Olesya Pervushina and Anastasia Potapova in the first round.
This year marks the first time an American team won the girls’ doubles title since Taylor Townsend and former UCLA commit Gabrielle Andrews in 2012.
UCLA gains a blue-chip recruit
Dolehide, a Hinsdale, Illinois, native who ranked as high as No. 5 in the country earlier this year according to tennisrecruiting.net, announced her commitment to UCLA in an Instagram post earlier this summer. With Hart and Shibahara joining the Bruins this year, UCLA women’s tennis will boast three blue-chip recruits for the 2018 season.
The U.S. Open was the second juniors’ Grand Slam in which Dolehide reached a girls’ doubles final, as she also finished as a runner up in Roland Garros in 2015. She also reached the round of 16 in singles at Roland Garros and Wimbledon.