Desdunes Named Director of USTA Junior & Collegiate Competition; Saviano Moves Academy to Plantation; Charlie Bricker on Gianluigi Quinzi
This isn't exactly breaking news, but if you don't frequent the USTA Player Development Staff Directory regularly, you might not know that Jean Desdunes has been named to the position of Senior Director, Junior and Collegiate Competition, which Timon Corwin vacated in May. Desdunes, formerly a Lead National Women's Coach at the USTA's Boca Raton National Training Center, was in Tulsa for the All-American and for the early part of the Pan American in his new role. Desdunes played collegiate tennis at Clemson, was head men's coach at Georgia Tech for ten years through 1998, and in 2005 became a USTA coach after several years with the USTA's Southern section.
There have been other changes in the coaching roster as well. Marc Lucero, the former women's assistant at Princeton, has been added, which probably means the end of his contributions as a writer/researcher for the Tennis Recruiting Network. Listed in the materials I received last month at the U.S. Open are two coaches who don't appear on the directory on the USTA website: Lee Hurst and Diego Moyano. Roger Smith, the longtime USTA coach who worked at Carson, Calif., Training Center, has left the organization.
In other coaching news, a recent issue of Florida Tennis (sorry, no link available), provided the news that Nick Saviano has moved his High Performance Tennis academy from Sunrise to Plantation, Florida. It is now located at the Frank Veltri Tennis Center, the home to the Girls 14s Clay Courts as well as ITF and Pro Circuit events.
Charlie Bricker visited another well-known Florida tennis academy recently, the IMG Nick Bollettieri Academy in Bradenton, to check out Gianluigi Quinzi, the 14-year-old Italian who has been sweeping through the ITF Grade 5s in the Caribbean this fall, winning four straight tournaments and 20 consecutive matches at that level. According to Bricker's piece in World Tennis Magazine, Quinzi will play the 16s at the Eddie Herr and Orange Bowl, but is going to make his professional debut at the upcoming Futures event in Guadalajara, Mexico.
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