The USTA's inaugural US Open Collegiate Wild Card Playoff begins in Lake Nona Monday evening, with the draws now posted here. The schedule for Monday and Tuesday is below, with the court assignments on the left.
Michigan's Gavin Young and Benjamin Kittay were unable to accept their invitation due to injury, with Nicolas Godsick and Hudson Rivera of Stanford taking their place.
MONDAY
5pm matches
Team USA 1 - (1) Mary Stoiana(Texas A&M) vs. DJ Bennett(Auburn)
Team USA 2 - (2) Michael Zheng(Columbia) vs. Aidan Kim(Ohio State)
Followed by matches
Team USA 1 - (1) Stefan Dostanic(Wake Forest) vs. Ozan Baris(Michigan State)
Team USA 2 - (2) Amelia Honer(UC-Santa Barbara) vs. Valerie Glozman(Stanford)
TUESDAY
5pm matches
Team USA 1 - (1) Nicolas Kotzen/Zheng(Columbia) vs. Nicholas Godsick/Hudson Rivera(Stanford)
Team USA 2- (1) Bennett/Ava Hrastar(Auburn) vs. Kaitlyn Carnicella/Sarah Hamner(South Carolina)
Followed by matches
Team USA 1 - (2) Olivia Center/Kate Fakih(UCLA) vs. Reese Brantmeier/Alanis Hamilton(UNC)
Team USA 2 - (2) Cooper Williams/Theo Winegar(Duke) vs. Alex Kotzen/Alejandro Moreno(Tennessee)
The finals in both singles and doubles are Wednesday.
As with yesterday's women's ITA Division I Kickoff Weekend draft for next February's National Team Indoor Championships, today's men's draft featured many more passes than normal, with 13 teams electing not to participate in the regional qualifying in January. Although only three teams in the 20s drafting position passed compared to five in the women's 20s, that is still a high number opting out.
The ranking of the last women's team in was Penn at 79 (the Penn men's team, ranked 50, passed); the ranking of the last men's team in the draft was 76, with Virginia Tech filling out the regional at Wake Forest, the No. 1 seed.
The Raleigh regional filled up in record time, with three of the first four teams in the drafting position choosing to travel to No. 7 NC State: Tennessee[15], Texas A&M[17] and Duke[18]. No. 16 Central Florida elected to go to No. 12 Cal.
Five regions filled up completely before anyone elected to go to No. 1 Wake Forest, No. 4 Stanford or No. 6 Ohio State. Cal and No. 13 South Carolina appear to be the most competitive, with all teams in those two regions ranked between 12 and 26.
The least competitive region is probably Ohio State, who has No. 53 Purdue, No. 56 Old Dominion and No. 63 North Alabama coming to Columbus. UCLA, even though ranked 14th and the last regional host, was avoided by mid-range teams, although they do have No. 38 UC-Santa Barbara as their No. 2 seed.
As I mentioned in yesterday's post on the women's draft, the reasons for so many teams passing may be related to more conference matches, smaller travel budgets, or perhaps just uncertainty when it comes to the impact of the approval of the House settlement, which takes effect July 1. I hope this isn't the first sign of the haves and have nots further polarizing in Division I college tennis, but I fear it might be just that.
The United States tennis team for the World University Games in July were announced this week, with UCLA's Kate Fakih and Olivia Center, Stanford's Nicolas Godsick, Harvard's Natalie Block and SMU's Trevor Sjavda and Jerry Barton traveling to Germany for the biennial competition. SMU men's head coach Grant Chen will lead Team USA. For more from Chen and several of the players, see this article from uclabruins.com.
Along with Week 3 of the SoCal Pro Series, there are two tournaments in the Midweest this week on the USTA Pro Circuit, with the men at the M25 in Wichita Kansas and the women competing in a W35 in Decatur Illinois.
The top two seeds and the only WTA Top 300 players in the draw lost in the first round, with Jenna Dean defeating top seed and WTA 274 YeXin Ma of China 6-3, 6-7(6), 6-3 and Ava Markham(Wisconsin) beat No. 2 seed and ATP 281 En Shuo Liang of Taiwan 7-6(5), 4-6, 7-6(4). Markham is through to the quarterfinals, where she'll face No. 7 seed Fiona Crawley(UNC), but Dean lost to Jaeda Daniel(Auburn, NC State) today. Daniel, the only other American to advance to the quarterfinals, will face Great Britain's Katie Swan next. Mayu Crossley of Japan, the No. 6 seed, defeated future UCLA teammate Kate Fakih 6-2, 6-1 and will play No. 3 seed Cadence Brace(LSU) of Canada in Friday's quarterfinals.
Rain in Wichita has delayed the completion of today's final second round match, with Nicolas Kotzen(Columbia) facing No. 6 seed and former ATP No. 19 Hyeon Chung of Korea. No. 3 seed Aidan Mayo is through to Friday's quarterfinals, and Aidan Kim(Florida, Ohio State) also advanced with a 6-2, 6-4 win over Ozan Baris(Michigan State), but Kim gave a walkover to Justin Boulais(Ohio State) of Canada, so Boulais is through to the semfinals. As you can see in the beginning of this post, both Kim and Baris are competing in the US Open Collegiate Wild Card Playoff beginning Monday in Orlando. Kotzen is playing doubles Tuesday.
Top seeds Nicolas Mejia of Colombia and Andres Andrade(Florida) of Ecuador are through to the quarterfinals.
At the SoCal Pro Series $15Ks for men and women in San Diego, last week's champion Oliver Tarvet, a rising senior and All-American from the University of San Diego, was not seeded this week. But in his second round match today against top seed Alfredo Perez(Florida), the 21-year-old from Great Britain came out on top 7-6(4), 2-6, 6-3. According to this article on first round action from Damian Secore for USTA SoCal, Tarvet hasn't lost a match on the USD courts since his freshman year.
Americans through to the quarterfinals are unseeded Trevor Svajda(SMU), who beat No. 7 seed Kyle Kang(Stanford) 6-2, 3-6, 6-0, unseeded Andrew Fenty(Michigan), No. 3 seed Alafia Ayeni(Cornell, Kentucky) and No. 8 seed Quinn Vandecasteele(Oregon). Fenty and Svajda will face each other next.
Two 18-year-old rising Stanford freshmen are through to the quarterfinals in San Diego, with unseeded Tianmei Wang of LA defeating No. 8 seed Maya Iyengar 6-0, 4-6, 6-3 and No. 6 seed Alyssa Ahn of San Diego beating last week's champion Lily Taylor(Arizona State) of Australia 6-4, 1-6, 6-3.
I missed the sad news last month that Joseph Oyebog, a pillar of African tennis in his home country of Cameroon and father to top juniors Lucy and Joseph Jr., has passed away at age 57. The ITF obituary details his efforts to raise the profile of the sport in Cameroon and in Africa and the legacy he has established there.