Davis Cup Camp; Stephens and Brodsky Open in Madison Square Garden; Stanford Takes Over No. 1 Spot in ITA Men's Rankings
The USTA is holding a Player Development Davis Cup camp in Birmingham, Ala., prior to this weekend's tie with Switzerland. The boys selected to participate, all of whom are 13 or 14 years old, are: Justin Butsch, Drew Dawson, Daniel Kerznerman, Thai Kwiatkowski, Mackenzie McDonald, Jack Murray and Noah Rubin. In addition to announcing the camp, the USTA has also provided an update on the boys' results and rankings in this release on usta.com.
In other Davis Cup news, Ryan Sweeting has replaced Amer Delic as a practice partner, and yesterday the team conducted an open practice, according to this story in the Birmingham News.
Sloane Stephens, who is now training in Carson, Calif., and Girls 18s champion Gail Brodsky were the opening act in the BNP Showdown for the Billie Jean King Cup exhibition held last night in Madison Square Garden. Their photo is the first one in the slideshow available at usta.com.
The first computer-generated Division I college tennis rankings have been released, and the team that lost, the Northwestern women, retained its No. 1 spot, while the team that didn't, the Virginia men, are no longer at the top. Stanford had an outstanding weekend in Southern California, beating both USC and UCLA, but they are ahead of Georgia, who beat them at the Team Indoor, didn't lose, and fell from No. 2 to No. 4 in the rankings. Fortunately, like all NCAA sports except football, the champion will be determined in competition, and the rankings are important only for seeding implications once the NCAA regionals and finals roll around in May. For the ITA release on today's rankings, click here.
USC's Robert Farah is now No. 1 in singles, the third player to claim the top spot in the three rankings this year. Unlike last year, when Virginia's Somdev Devvarman was No. 1 wire-to-wire, the individual championship this year should be much more wide open. Clemson's Ani Mijacika has taken the women's No. 1 berth from Northwestern's Maria Mosolova. For the complete rankings, see the Campbell's ITA ranking page.
And I'm a day late on this, but congratulations to the women of Carnegie-Mellon, who won the first ITA Division III Women's Team Indoor last weekend in Minnesota, defeating Emory 6-3 in the final. The ITA's account is available here.
Former Clemson star Julie Coin, who is now a career-high 68th in the WTA rankings, won the Clearwater, Fla. $50,000 Pro Circuit event on Sunday, in one of the most unlikely ways possible. She trailed No. 2 seed Yanina Wickmayer of Belgium 3-6 when at 1-1 in the second set Wickmayer was defaulted for apparently hitting a linesperson with a ball. Credit to Diane Dees at the blog Women Who Serve for unearthing some details about the incident.
And ZooTennis sponsor Own The Zone string vibration dampeners is announcing today a new partnership with Rally for the Cure®, providing pink bands for distribution at tennis events held to support breast cancer awareness. For the complete release, click here.
9 comments:
How the mighty have fallen. Stanford women #13 and Florida women #31. I imagine those are probably all time low rankings for each program.
On a more positive note, Florida beat FSU in men's tennis, 5-2. FSU won the doubles point and #1 singles, Florida took 2-6. I was optimistic that Hamui and Hochwalt would play singles, as they were tentatively penciled in for singles at 4 & 5, but they were held out again. Maybe they'll be ready for SEC play. I think Florida will be very good if those guys are healthy and in the lineup.
the Gators were dominating early. I followed the first sets and then had to stop and at that point I believe they had claimed each of the six opening sets. I guess FSU made a valiant comeback to make it interesting.
LOL, Stanford at #1, what a joke. Even coach Whitlinger knows that's a total fraud. UVA are the real #1 and Georgia is the real #2. Stanford is, at best, a very distant #4.
A very distant 4. C'mon they had two great wins this weekend. Realistically they should have been number 3. They have been better than OSU, performing better at indoors (osu's best surface) and they had two high caliber wins this weekend.
Two great wins over the weekend doesn't climb a team to #1 in the rankings especially if they do not beat the actual #1 and #2 teams in the country.
I completely dislike the NCAA Tennis rankings, team and individual.
At least all the teams will play for the Championship in the end, unlike football. This will just put all the pressure on Stanford, and not the other teams which is a huge advantage for those other teams, like Ohio State, UCLA, Virginia, and Georgia, amongst a few others.
I wonder when the last time UCLA didnt have multiple players in place for receiving bids into the singles happened? Their individual rankings are paltry right now.
Colette, The computer rankings at this stage are like looking at the BCS in early Oct. Stanford has played a stronger schedule SO FAR. They only have 3 quality matches left.USC UCLA & Baylor Teams like UVa & Georgia have the opportunity to catch up in coming weeks. In fact this week's ranking was more of a quirk based on the last ballot rankings. Next week UVa will move back to no 1 mainly b/c USC & UCLA fell in the rankings. They are Stanford's best wins (note that the computer uses the previous week's ratings in its calculations). Voters liked UCLA b/c obviously they are good & will be better when healthy. However the unbiased computer does NOT like UCLA b/c their only decent win is Illinois. Also several of Uva's opponents moved up which will help the Hoos (TN UK & Ill). Georgia will also move up next week if they beat Ole Miss. UGA has a relatively weak SOS at this stage prior to SEC play. OSU will drop some b/c last week they had 2 too ten wins. Based on this week's rankings they have no top ten wins
Stanford is a clear number one and no one on stanford's team ever plays indoor tennis so a semifinal appearance is a great result. Usc is def a top 4 team. Illinois is over ranked as well as texas.
Yeah its weird that Stanford doesnt play indoors; its not exactly warm in Nor Cal in spring.
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