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Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Levine, Devvarman and Britton Prepare for 2010; Pro Circuit Review; Barte's College Spotlight

The first ITA Campbell collegiate rankings of 2010 won't be out until next Tuesday, but stories about Jesse Levine, Somdev Devvarman and Devin Britton got me thinking about college-related stories I've missed in the past month.

I tried to keep up with the U.S. team's exciting 4-3 win over France for the Master'U BNP Paribas world university challenge championship, but with the Dunlop Orange Bowl in full swing, I wasn't able to devote much space to it. The results are here, and Georgia Tech's Irina Falconi wrote an entertaining blog for usta.com, full of on-court and off-court observations, which can be found here. Texas A&M's Austin Krajicek, USC's Steve Johnson, Notre Dame's Kristy Frilling, Kentucky's Eric Quigley, Tennessee's Caitlin Whoriskey and Falconi made up the team, coached by Greg Patton of Boise State and Michelle Dasso of Illinois.

Charlie Bricker caught up with Jesse Levine recently for a story on Bob Larson's Tennis News website, and according to Bricker, the former Florida Gator has decided not to go to Australia for the Open qualifying, where he is five places out of the main draw. Instead, he will play challengers in Hawaii and Dallas and prepare for ATP events in San Jose, Memphis and Delray Beach.

Somdev Devvarman, the 2007 and 2008 NCAA champion from Virginia, is back in his hometown of Chennai, where he reached the final of the ATP event held there in January. In this story from indianexpress.com, entitled "I have learnt from my errors," Devvarman reveals his plans, which do include Australia. There is a chance he will receive a main draw wild card there, as one is reserved for an Asian player.

Devin Britton, the 2009 NCAA champion from Ole Miss, was named sports person of the year by his local newspaper, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, and the accompanying story provides the first public reference to his endorsement deals with K-Swiss and Tecnifibre.

In her 2009 Pro Circuit wrap, Sally Milano of usta.com highlights several former collegians--Laura Granville, Riza Zalameda, Cory Parr, Michael Russell and Jesse Witten--as well as Ryan Harrison.

And Stanford's Hilary Barte was the subject of the usta.com College Spotlight earlier this month.

9 comments:

Craig said...

Is Somdev considered Asian? If they are holding one wildcard for an asian player, why would an Indian player get a shot at it?

Bess said...

Devvarman is the highest ranked Asian player not already in the main draw: why wouldn't he be considered for the ATF wild card? (Contrary to your belief, India is & always has been located in Asia:
http://asiantennis.com/about_atf/nat_associations.htm)

David said...

India is part of Asia.

TechGirl said...

Colette,

I don't know if you've mentioned it or not but Audra Cohen has signed on as assistant coach at the University of Wisconsin
http://www.uwbadgers.com/sports/w-tennis/spec-rel/122209aaa.html

I don't know if that means she's retired from the circuit or if it's one of those deals where she works with the team when she isn't playing.

Sad if she did retire as she was such an overwhelmingly dominant player in college. Do you know what the story is (I do remember her having a few injuries).

uhhh said...

...India is part of Asia. Does that answer your question?

getreal said...

Anyone know what has jordan Cox been doing since he turned pro?

Colette Lewis said...

@Tech Girl:
I did tweet about Cohen's new position last week. I heard that she was back in school at Miami finishing her degree, but I don't know if she's done playing professionally.

TechGirl said...

Colette,

So that's: Thompson at Yale, Cohen at Wisconsin, Hannah Grady at Long Beach State, Mallory Voelker at Colorado State, Jamea Jackson at Oklahoma State, Zsuzsanna Fodor at Cal, Shelley Godwin at Michigan State, Laura Gordon at Fresno State, Sarah (Foster)Gray at TCU and Amanda Rales at Princeton. All freshman assistant coaches and all have been top Div I talent in the past 5 years.

Also, Georgia Tech's own Lyndsay Shosho (yay) is in her 2nd year at Kentucky, Tiffany Coll is in her 2nd at Boise State, , Gleisy Torres Torres at Colorado and Aleke Tsoubanos is in her 2nd at Vanderbilt.

On top of that, Megan Bradley was named head coach at Princeton and Natalija Subotic, who literally just graduated from the Division II Pace University, was named head women's coach at John Jay College.

That's a lot of recent talent and some of the winningest players in college history, both at their respective schools and in the NCAA in general. So great to see so many of the women getting the chance to make their mark and help to grow the game.

Sorry for the long post but I really thought it was worth mentioning.

Austin said...

Yikes, Cohen sure gave up on her pro career pretty fast.