Harrison Qualifies at ATP Delray Beach; Shelby Rogers Wins Family Circle Qualifying Wild Card; Furman's Europe Diary; Protest Against Syracuse Upheld
Ryan Harrison won his third qualifying match today in at the ATP's International Tennis Championships at Delray Beach, beating former Old Dominion All-American Izak van der Merwe of South Africa 6-4, 5-7, 7-6(2). Yesterday, Harrison defeated No. 2 qualifying seed Carsten Ball of Australia 2-6, 7-6(5), 6-3. Harrison has cracked the top 300--he is now at a career-high 296--and regardless of the outcome of his first round match against Ernests Gulbis on Tuesday, he will move up even more next week. According to this story in the Sun-Sentinel, Harrison declined a wild card into the main draw in order to earn his way in. He did accept a doubles wild card however, and playing with Taylor Dent, reached the second round with a win over former LSU star Ken Skupski and his partner Colin Fleming. The Sun-Sentinel
story also has Pat Rafter's assessment of Bernard Tomic's game and future for those interested in the young Australian. The Palm Beach Post also quoted Harrison in this interesting story on the value of mixing the Champions Tour with an ATP event.
The SMASH Cup concluded today and Charleston's own Shelby Rogers won the girls 18 tournament, and with it, a qualifying wild card into the Family Circle Cup, a Premier WTA event, which is scheduled for April 10-18th. The 17-year-old Rogers, seeded second, defeated unseeded Emily Gelber 6-1, 6-2 in the final. For the complete results, including all other age groups, see the TennisLink site.
The Tennis Recruiting Network has posted a great diary today from Spencer Furman, the 12-year-old who was on the trip to the Aegon Teen Tennis and Les Petits As tournaments last month in Europe. Furman does a fantastic job of providing a look at the trip from a fresh perspective and he also assesses the game styles and strengths of each of the U.S. players he traveled with. I predict he has many USTA and ITF blogs in his future.
And as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Eastern Michigan's coach Ryan Ray protested the lineup of Syracuse's head coach Luke Jensen and last week the protest was upheld by the ITA. Eastern is now showing what was originally a 4-3 loss as a win on their results page, but Syracuse has not changed their win to a loss. The No. 5 player in question, C.C. Sardinha, has played No. 1 in Syracuse's last two matches against Columbia and Princeton. Jensen as college coach is the subject of a Jon Wertheim story in the March issue of Tennis magazine. Unfortunately, there is no link available, but if you get the magazine with your USTA membership, look for it.
3 comments:
The protest outcome is almost too easy. Let's see, the Eastern Michigan coach when filing the protest quoted something around international rules of fair play. Eastern Michigan's roster...players from India, Austria, China, Australia, Belgium, Zimbabwe, Bolivia, and The Netherlands. Isn't this NCAA Division I women's college tennis we're talking about? The Syracuse roster, West Virginia, California, Colorado, Virginia, Washington DC, Florida, California, and Nevada. Sorry Luke! The opposing coach protested the outcome of your Davis Cup or Federation Cup USTA products in college takes on the world match - please change your results on your Syracuse website.
I guess that is sarcasm above me towards foreign players in the NCAA, but with my understanding of the rules you are not allowed to move a player in your lineup more than 3 spots unless you are sitting players or something. So it was a very bad mistake by Syracuse and not surprising that it is overturned.
Regarding NCAA rules as it relates to the post of a couple of days ago about allowed time off after high school graduation. I spoke with NCAA compliance and in spite of the fact that the new rule allowing only 6 months off after graduation comes into effect August 2011 the current class of 2010 IS affected by this. Any current 2010 graduating senior must either enroll in school before Jan 2011 or cease all organized competition after that date until they do enroll. It boggles the mind that the NCAA would pas a rule like this in January after many recruiting and scholarship deadlines have passed disadvantaging any kids with plans to take a year off after graduation to play tennis. Anyway I think its important to get the information out as it may affect a number of kids.
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