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Monday, September 10, 2012

Murray Wins US Open; Preseason ITA Division I College Rankings Released


Today was a travel day for me, but I got home in time to watch the last four sets of men's final, although because our local affiliate didn't switch to it here in Kalamazoo until 8 p.m., most of the time I was watching on my computer.

As I'm sure you know, Andy Murray defeated defending champion Novak Djokovic 7-6(10), 7-5, 2-6, 3-6, 6-2 to claim his first slam title and the first for a British man since Fred Perry won the US Open in 1936.

Murray won the first junior slam I covered, the 2004 US Open, so I have always pulled for him to break through, while realizing, given the history of British tennis, that it would never be easy. With his win today Murray is one of only four players to have won both the junior and adult titles in New York, joining Stefan Edberg, Andy Roddick and Lindsay Davenport.  As it was for Edberg, the gap between the boys' and men's titles for Murray was eight years, and should the pattern hold, Murray will win next year's US Open title, as Edberg won back-to-back men's titles in 1991 and 1992.

Congratulations to Murray, who has many more years of great tennis ahead of him.

On Friday, the ITA released the preseason individual rankings. These rankings are basically used for seeding the All American tournaments coming up next month, and usually change dramatically by the time the two individual majors are complete in mid November.

The men's Top 10:
1   Henrique Cunha    Duke University
2    Jarmere Jenkins    University of Virginia
3    Sebastian Fanselow    Pepperdine
4    Evan King    University of Michigan
5    Nik Scholtz    University of Mississippi
6    Costin Paval    University of Oklahoma
7    Mate Zsiga    Baylor University
8    Alex Domijan    University of Virginia
9    Ray Sarmiento    University of Southern California
10  KU Singh    University of Georgia

Notable absentees include Virginia sophomore Mitchell Frank, who is out with an injury, and Ohio State junior Blaz Rola, who is competing in Futures tournaments this fall, and in fact yesterday just won his fourth Futures title since completing his sophomore year in May.

In the Newcomer rankings, Duke has the top 2: Michael Redlicki and Bruno Semenzato.

The top-ranked preseason team in men's doubles is Costin Paval and Dane Webb of Oklahoma.

The women's Top 10:

1  Nicole Gibbs Stanford
2  Beatrice Capra Duke University
3  Robin Anderson UCLA
4  Cristina Sanchez-Quintanar Texas A&M University
5  Zsofi Susanyi California
6  Lauren Embree University of Florida
7  Zoe Scandalis University of Southern California
8  Sabrina Santamaria University of Southern California
9  Emina Bektas University of Michigan
10 Mary Anne Macfarlane University of Alabama

Krista Hardebeck of Stanford and Klara Fabikova of California are the top two women's newcomers.

The top-ranked preseason team in women's doubles is USC's Sabrina Santamaria and Kaitlyn Christian.


For the complete list of rankings, see the ITA website.

The meeting of the NCAA Division I Championships/Sports Management Cabinet began today and will end tomorrow, with the restructuring of the Sweet 16 and the other recommendations regarding warmup and changeover times on the agenda. I will tweet as soon as I hear anything about those changes.


5 comments:

Looking for the match said...

Same thing happened with our CBS Affiliate. Match was aired on your local CW (check @wwmtnews tweets). Would've been nice if they scrolled it at the bottom or the screen on CBS as I was watching online for good portion of the match before I found it on the CW.

Austin said...

Is Rola even going to come back? Anyone know? Have my doubts.

Brent said...

I think Rola is done.

I did see that Giron beat Clay Thompson in the last round of qualies at this week's Futures. If Thompson plays #1 again over Giron and especially Novikov, I expect a full-on riot out of USC (and others)

wotten wun said...

Colette---two Q's:
1. which of the newcomers--
Krista Hardebeck of Stanford and Klara Fabikova of California, have higher rank?
2. Had she not turned pro, where would Mallory Burdette (formerly of Stanford) have been slotted in the women's top 10?

Austin said...

Wouldnt be surprised to see Thompson at #3 or 4. UCLA has had guys go from top of the lineup back toward the middle/bottom many times over the past 10-15yrs. Not anything shady I dont think, but just something you see there that doesnt happen a lot at other places. Could be in part to having a lot of talent. Guys like Jean Noel-Grinda, Jean Julien-Rojer, Holden Seguso all did that, went from #1 or 2 down to 4-5. All of the teams they were on were all top ranked though. Adrian Puget is another guy who is really good and could move up.