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Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Goldstein Named Men's Coach at Stanford, Fendick-McCain Resigns at Texas; Rubin Top Seed in Wimbledon Junior Qualifying; Bellis, Fritz Reach Roehampton Semifinals

There's plenty of news today, both in college tennis and on the grass courts of Wimbledon and Roehampton.

Goldstein was a three-time singles champion in Kalamazoo
Paul Goldstein, who played for Stanford from 1994-1998, winning four NCAA team titles, has been named head coach for the Cardinal, replacing John Whitlinger, who retired last month.  The 37-year-old from Rockville, Md. played on the ATP tour for ten years, reaching a career-high ranking of 58 in 2006. Goldstein, who was inducted into the Intercollegiate Tennis Association's Men's Hall of Fame in 2013, has been working at a Bay Area energy company for the past six years.  For more on Goldstein, see the Stanford website's release.  I spoke with Goldstein back in 2009 in this article for the Tennis Recruiting Network (subscription required for full article.)

Another big college job opened today with the announcement that University of Texas women's head coach Patty Fendick-McCain is retiring after nine years in Austin.  A two-time NCAA singles champion at Stanford in 1986 and 1987, Fendick-McCain also won an Australian Open doubles title with Mary Joe Fernandez and was ranked in the WTA Top 20.  Given the size and the athletic department budget of Texas, this ranks as the most significant coaching change on the women's side this year.

The Wimbledon junior qualifying begins Thursday at Roehampton, with just three US players participating. Top qualifying seed Noah Rubin is the only US boy, and if he gets through his two qualifying matches, he will be seeded in the main draw thanks to his ATP ranking of 539. Both Taylor Fritz and Dennis Uspensky, who were next in the main draw, must have gotten in, as neither are in qualifying.  Fritz may have gotten in on a special exemption, since he reached Thursday's semifinals at Roehampton, but I'm sure the method of reaching the main draw isn't important, as long as he's in.

The US girls in qualifying are Raquel Pedraza and Michaela Gordon. Pedraza has been in Europe for some time, but the 14-year-old Gordon, if you recall, won the Northern California US Open Playoffs over the weekend, so she hasn't had much time to acclimate herself to the grass. She is the No. 5 seed in qualifying, with Pedraza the No. 11 seed. Olivia Hauger was third out of the main draw, and with Katie Swan from Great Britain most likely getting a wild card, she may have avoided qualifying, as she is not in the girls draw.

The Wimbledon junior draws and the order of play for Thursday are available at the LTA website.

At the Roehampton Grade 1, CiCi Bellis and, as mentioned, Taylor Fritz have reached the singles semifinals.  The unseeded Fritz defeated Seong Chan Hong of Korea 7-6(5), 6-4 and will meet top seed Andrey Rublev of Russia in the semifinals.  Bellis, the top girls seed, reached the semifinals with a 4-6, 6-2, 6-4 victory over No. 12 seed Katie Boulter of Great Britain. Bellis will play No. 5 seed Kristina Schmiedlova of Slovakia in Thursday's semifinals.  The Roehampton draws and order of play are also available at the LTA home page.

At Wimbledon, Venus Williams and Lauren Davis collected second round wins, and Sam Querrey is 9-9 in the fifth set with No. 14 seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France.  In addition to the completion of the Querrey-Tsonga match, Serena Williams, Alison Riske, Madison Keys, Jack Sock, Denis Kudla, John Isner and Vicky Duval are on Thursday's singles schedule.

4 comments:

Joey said...

I believe Fendick-McCain's departure is tied directly to the Texas's AD's edict that she and Men's coach Michael Center have to raise enormous amounts of money to build a new tennis facility since their existing facility has been razed to make room for a Nursing School or something like that.

? said...

Could I ask what happened with the whole Redlicki situation at Duke? It's probably hushed up, but just curious about the entire situation, first with the suspension and now with Martin switching schools.

Also with regards to the Collegiate Invitational, this means that Giron could potentially get 2 consecutive wild cards, one from this year's NCAA tournament an the second from this invitational if he wins and brings his ranking up?

Anonymous said...

Speaking of Duke, what happened to Monica Turewicz? She had very good freshman year in 2012, was injured in 2013 and was not of the roster in 2014.

NCAA tennis fan said...

To ?

I heard a lot of rumors about the Michael Redlicki situation when I was attending NCAA's this year. To my knowledge, he had poor on court behavior and was way over the top. After watching him play in juniors, I'm not surprised by hearing this about his behavior. I also heard that he had an fighting incident with a Virginia Tech player. There have been many rumors as to what exactly happened in that match but obviously it was serious enough to get him suspended for the rest of the season. My guess with Martin Redlicki is that he signed an NLI to go to Duke because he wanted to be with his brother but when Michael's standing on the team came in jeopardy he decided to switch schools. My guess is that Michael will be playing at a different school in the fall and will not be attending Duke.