Harold Solomon Featured on Tennis Channel Academy; More College Signings; Kudla and Bangoura in Futures Quarters; Australian ITF Grade 1 Dropped
If you are lucky enough to get the Tennis Channel, you will have an opportunity to see zootennis contributor Harold Solomon this weekend when he kicks off the new season of the Tennis Channel Academy series with Tracy Austin. According to this release, Solomon is the first of seven coaches who will be featured at their academies this fall. The others are: Rennae Stubbs, Johan Kriek, Craig Kardon, Wayne Bryan, Emilio Sanchez and Brett Hobden. The first airing of the Solomon segment is Sunday at 6:30 p.m. Eastern. For dates and times it is repeated, click here.
Although most of the major collegiate signings have not been announced yet by the schools, another blue chip, Christopher Mengel, revealed today at the Tennis Recruiting Network that he would be playing for Duke, as will Cale Hammond of Oklahoma, who was thought to be leaning toward staying in state and playing for John Roddick's Sooners.
There were several announcements involving the signing of local players, with four star recruit Nicolas Kamisar going to Washington, five star recruit Grant Roberts signing with Kentucky, and four star recruit Nikki Chiricosta making it official at Bowling Green. Most of the announcements will be out, I expect, by Monday, but you can keep up with them at Tennis Recruiting Network by checking on the boys' commitments and girls' commitments pages.
In the Pro Circuit Futures event in Niceville, Fla., Sekou Bangoura Jr. and Denis Kudla have reached the singles quarterfinals with wins today. Bangoura, a wild card, beat No. 7 seed Adam El Mihdawy in three sets, while Kudla, a qualifier, downed No. 8 seed Chris Klingemann, the former Ohio State Buckeye, in straight sets. Due to Hurricane Ida, there were a lot of walkovers and byes in the doubles, and although it's only Thursday, the doubles finalists are set, with the unseeded team of Bangoura and Kudla facing the top-seeded team of Tigran Martirosyan and Artem Sitak for the title. Florida State men's assistant coach Matt Cloer competed in the event, and was featured in this story in the Northwest Florida Daily News. CoCo Vandeweghe has reached the quarterfinals of the women's Pro Circuit event in Phoenix. For the complete draws, see the Pro Circuit results page.
The fact sheet is out for the Australian Open Junior tournament, but a quick review of the schedule for early 2010 reveals that the Optus Nottinghill Grade 1 is absent. The Loy Yang Traralgon Grade 1 has been moved to Nottinghill's place on the calendar right before the Australian Open Junior Championships. The qualifying for the AO Juniors has also been moved, to Bendigo, which is 90 minutes to two hours away from Melbourne. It will be interesting to see if the fields, which are always the weakest of the four junior majors, suffer from these changes. For the details, see the ITF junior website.
2 comments:
Colette,
I was wondering if you knew what has happened to Wil Spencer. I have noticed that he is not on Texas AM's Roster. I live in NW Florida, where Wil is from and I haven't seen or heard anything about him. On a side note, I have been watching the futures tournament this week at Niceville and I have been very impressed with Kudla. Doesn't seem to have any real weaknesses.
Spencer is not returning to A & M, and although I had heard he was considering transferring, from what I'm hearing now, he probably won't be playing anywhere this spring.
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