My Report on Michigan's Win Over Texas A&M; ITA Announces Regional Award Winners; Pearson Ford Open Begins June 6; New Website: Tennis Insiders

My coverage of the University of Michigan and Texas A&M women's regional final is available today at the Tennis Recruiting Network. It's a rare Michigan match I cover live that's not 4-3, and I didn't anticipate anything but a last-match-on result for this dual between the No. 15 and No. 19 ranked teams.  As she did in January for the ITA Team Indoor, Brooke Bolender sent her team to the final 16, this time in Athens, not Charlottesville.

Today the ITA released the names of the regional winners of the various awards, which includes such categories as Coach of the Year, Senior of the Year, Rookie of the Year and Arthur Ashe Leaderships and Sportsmanship Award, among several others.  The ITA National awards are announced on Tuesday, May 22nd, at a luncheon prior to the start of the team championships. I've been to many of these luncheons and every year there is a national winner who did not appear on the regional list, so these are not actually nominations, but rather regional winners.

I was asked to pass along the information for an Open tournament that has been a fixture on the Midwest tennis scene for sometime, the Pearson Ford Open. Formerly held at the Indianapolis Tennis Center, which was razed nearly two years ago, the Pearson Ford Open offers $20,000 in prize money and has been a popular tournament for recent college graduates looking to earn money to support their travel in the professional minor leagues. Amateurs are also welcome, as evidenced by the list of recent winners, which includes Illinois All-American Dennis Nevolo, now in his senior year there, and former Ohio State All-American Justin Kronauge, now an assistant coach at his alma mater.

The tournament will take place June 6-10, 2012 at the Woodstock Country Club in Indianapolis, Indiana.  The deadline to register is June 1, 2012.  For more details, see this release, and feel free to contact Tom Moore or Kathy Risacher at the numbers and emails listed there.  The TennisLink site for the tournament is here.

For a listing of other upcoming Open tournaments, see Steve G tennis.

Another resource that's recently surfaced for the tennis community is Steve Bellamy's latest venture: Tennis Insiders.  There are forums, polls and articles on all levels of tennis, so see if there's a topic of interest to you, and start connecting.