My Q and A with Treat Huey and Dominic Inglot; TCU, Tulane Kick Off Tennis Channel's Inside College Tennis Program; ITF Grade 1 Yucatan Cup Switches to Clay, Grade A in Mexico Moves to Year-End

Earlier this month at the US Open in New York, I was able to sit down with former University of Virginia All-Americans Treat Huey and Dom Inglot to talk about their climb to the upper echelons of the ATP doubles rankings.  Huey and Inglot had earlier that day lost their quarterfinal doubles match to Ivan Dodig of Croatia and Marcelo Melo of Brazil, but showed few signs of disappointment in the interview, which was my first opportunity to talk to either of them at length since they graduated.

The Tennis Recruiting Network published the resulting Q and A today.

Below are two photos from Huey's and Inglot's college days; Huey with Somdev Devvarman and Inglot with Michael Shabaz.

Huey and Devvarman, champions of 2007 ITA All-American

Shabaz and Inglot, 2009 NCAA champions

This week has been full of conversation about college doubles and about college tennis on television, with the interview linked above addressing the former (Huey and Inglot are not, unsurprisingly, in favor of doubles last), and this bit of news about the latter.

The TCU and Tulane men's and women's tennis teams will be featured in a Tennis Channel program called "Inside College Tennis," hosted by former LSU women's head coach Tony Minnis.  This release from TCU describes the 30-minute program as a behind-the-scenes look at college tennis. Filming at the TCU campus in Fort Worth was just completed, with the program's premier airing in December.

The ITF announced a few days ago that its Grade 1 Yucatan Cup in Mexico, held the week preceding the Eddie Herr, will move to clay this year, from hard courts.  The junior circuit now has three weeks of major clay tournaments to end the year: Yucatan, Eddie Herr and Orange Bowl.

In addition, the Grade A Abierto Juvenil Mexicano, traditionally held over Christmas and New Year's, but counted as the first ITF tournament of the new calendar year, will move to the end of the year in 2014.

Several years ago, the Yucatan Cup was immediately after the Orange Bowl, but that caused scheduling difficulties, with limited flights to the Yucatan often causing travel problems for those still playing at the Orange Bowl, so that tournament was shifted. Having back-to-back Grade As could add some spice to the ITF world junior champion races, which haven't been too exciting recently, but I'm not sure why the move is taking place, unless it's just to have the calendar year coincide better with the actual dates of the tournament.  So in 2014, there will be an extra Grade A, with Abierto Juvenil held in both January and December, and in 2015, there will be one less Grade A than usual.  The release announcing the change says the ITF calendar for the first half of 2014 will be published next month.