Podcasts on Team Indoor Championships Now Available; Puig Advances to Quarterfinals in Surprise; Cohen Signs with Agent
There were again some technical difficulties, but Granger Huntress and I managed to complete our Skype conversations about the upcoming ITA Team Indoor Championships. To listen to the women's edition, click here.
Friday's first round schedule in Charlottesville:
9 a.m.: Miami vs. No. 2 Florida
9 a.m.: Clemson vs. No. 7 UCLA
12:30 p.m.: Virginia vs. No. 3 Baylor
12:30 p.m.: Tennessee vs. No. 6 Duke
4 p.m.: Northwestern vs. No. 5 California
4 p.m.: Washington vs. No. 4 North Carolina
7:30 p.m.: Georgia Tech vs. No. 8 Michigan
7:30 p.m.: Arkansas vs. No. 1 Stanford
Live scoring can be found at the ITA's tournament page. 
Our conversation about the men's tournament can be found here.
Friday's schedule for the men in Seattle (times are local):
9 a.m.: No. 11 Louisville vs. No. 6 UCLA
9 a.m.: No. 14 Georgia vs. No. 3 Tennessee*
noon: No. 10 Florida vs. No. 7 Stanford
noon: No. 15 Duke vs. No. 2 USC*
3:30 p.m.: No. 12 Kentucky vs. No. 5 Texas
3:30 p.m.: No. 13 Texas Tech vs. No. 4 Ohio State*
6:30 p.m.: No. 9 Texas A&M vs. No. 8 Illinois
6:30 p.m.: No. 16 Washington vs. No. 1 Virginia*
*Live streaming available at Nordstrom Tennis Center
The links to live streaming and scoring can be found at the ITA's tournament page.
Today in the Surprise, Arizona's 25K, Australian Open girls finalist Monica Puig won her second round match with AOYAMA, Shuko Aoyama of Japan 6-1, 6-2 to advance to the quarterfinals. There are no seeds remaining in Puig's half of the draw, and she will play Nadejda Guskova of Russia on Friday. For complete results, see the Pro Circuit page at usta.com.
A new sports management agency is Las Vegas Nevada sent out a release regarding its signing of Vavarva Lepchenko, and it also included the information that Julia Cohen was a client. Last spring the 21-year-old, who played one year at Florida and another at Miami, was competing sporadically for the Division II California of Pennsylvania team, but the news that she has signed with an agent now makes her ineligible to play in college.
8 comments:
I enjoyed listening to the podcast! I like your picks for the winner on the men's side.
Thank you for your coverage of college tennis. Your articles on the National Team Indoors and NCAAs are the best available.
Les Brewer's answers on the tennisrecruiting interview are an embarrassment. I consider a majority of the answers to be fabrications. I don't know of any parents that are happy with the changes or of any parent that was surveyed. We've been traveling to tournaments for six years in Florida. Changes have been made in Florida each and every year for the last 4 years, thus the opening line of "change has finally arrived," is also garbage in its highest form. The current USTA administration is unchallenged and nothing more than a monopoly. I would love for the USTA to have competition in the United States from another entity. The USTA has really no clear cut goal that they are held accountable for. They've also with these recent changes taken tennis back to being a country club sport, elitist sport, a sport of entitlement. They are in their infinite wisdom reducing competition, "we've seen a lot less 6-0, 6-0." Who cares! The child who lost 0,0 may be a hard worker and may turn around and beat that kid in a couple months, but not under the current regime, you never get to play that kid again! The track record of building players by the USTA in the last 15 years...in any other sport NFL, NBA, MLB, NCAA, would have led to an owner or athletic director firing everybody and starting over from scratch! In ten years from now, it's a fair guess that not one player will have come from the USTA that plays on the tour and is successful as a result of Patrick "part time USTA, Full time ESPN" McEnroe's strong involvement. The USTA is ruining tennis! How can they pretend to be surprised that they're losing athletes to other sports? There is not one other sport in the United States where it is so tough for a child to participate in open competition. The USTA does a great job of adding constraints, restrictions, and obstacles.
In looking back over the large Opens and other National tournaments, I see NO wins over seeds. EVER.
That's sarcasm if you didn't notice.
Wins over seeds and/or very close matches are much more common than 6-0, 6-0 scores. Those are the evolving, hard working, physical kids breaking through.
They are not going to get the chance to do this under the new system.
The kids who get in in their 12s will be in the gravy train.
Are those kids going to be the physical specimins that our country needs to compete in the world tennis arena?
I appreciate the effort to make things better, but many parts of this change seem, well -- not thought out...
Thank you for sharing the schedule of the matches! The link to the live scoring was also helpful. www.tennisround.com
We have had two kids in junior tennis for the last 10 years and have participated in 100's of tournaments. The first time we and any other parents we have spoken with heard about these changes was last summer. Rumors were all over the place but no clarity from anyone we spoke to at USTA as early as May of 2010. Had we known earlier we would have played my 14 year old son up in the 16's throughout 2010. He turns 15 in May and he is being put in a very unfortunate situation.The current older 15 year old kids have a lock on the national points for the rest of this year and next. I called Lew and expressed my concern back in the summer when I heard of this as well as our regional head of junior competition and I was told that some point adjustments might be made for the kids aging up but that has not happened.It might all work itself out as Lew stated but it will take more then just months for this to occur and I believe a by product of this change is that all kids aging up especially those post January got the shaft on this one. Bottom line not well thought out from a transition perspective!
Tyler
You did a great job critizing but that is the real easy, unintelligent part - what about throwing out a few solutions? You remind me of this quote -
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people"
While Lew Brewer does the explaining and public answering of questions, The Sections play the BIGGEST role in the changes of rules and rankings in the usta.
As a parent of a junior, I remember quite well getting emails asking me to comment on particular tournaments and the overall tournament experience. Since every parent, according to one comment, hates the changes and can't remember ever being asked, perhaps I'm the parent to blame for expressing my concerns over the excessive costs and school time missed. I'm very happy that the draws for the national tournaments have been reduced and that six instead of eight tournaments will count for the rankings. If these changes, which are intended to alleviate my two main peeves: cost and schooltime, don't work and produce a ranking system that is unfair, then there is no reason why they can't be changed again.
bottom line....if your kid can't win at local level, why in the world would you put him/her in a national event?
Less is more in my book.
SOLUTION:
get a decent coach and practice after school. Play the events that you can get into - if you "WIN", you will be able to play higher level events.
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