The Futures Grind; USTA Announces Participants in Upcoming Fed Cup Camp; Four US Girls and One Boy Make Inka Bowl Quarterfinals; First College Match Day Friday at Florida State

Before I start my live coverage of the ITA Women's Team Indoor here in Charlottesville Friday morning, which will no doubt lead me to fall behind on other junior and college tennis news, here are a few items I definitely don't want to slip through the cracks.



Grantland.com, the ESPN site dedicated to long-form sports and popular culture writing, took a look at the recent participants in last month's Sunrise Futures tournament in Florida, with former Michigan teammates Evan King and Jason Jung, former Florida State star Jean-Yves Aubone and Orange Bowl champion Francis Tiafoe all prominently featured. Pat Harrison and Brad Gilbert also provide insights into the differences between players at the Futures level and those who make it to the very top of the game. An inescapable theme of this piece, and of many others like it, is the minuscule prize money offered at this level, and the decisions, both short-term and long-term, that players must make as a result. It's long, but well worth reading, and it can be found here.

The USTA today announced the young players who will be part of the Fed Cup camp this week in Cleveland. The absence of the Williams sisters and Sloane Stephens has given the US team a decidedly youthful cast, with Madison Keys, Alison Riske, Christina McHale and Lauren Davis taking on Italy, which is also playing without its top-ranked players. For on-site coverage of the Fed Cup this weekend, see the Tennis Panorama website.

The six girls participating in the camp are Amanda Anisimova, Tornado Alicia Black, Hurricane Tyra Black, Elizabeth Halbauer, Sofia Kenin and Alexis Nelson. For the complete press release, see this Google document.

At the ITF Grade 2 in Peru, No. 3 seed Logan Smith has advanced to the quarterfinals in the boys draw, and four US girls have reached the quarterfinals: top seed Dasha Ivanova, No. 2 seed Madison Bourguignon, No. 9 seed Raquel Pedraza and No. 10 seed Ellyse Hamlin. With young Canadians Vanessa Wong and No. 3 seed Katherine Sebov also advancing to the quarterfinals, North Americans are dominating the girls tournament, which is held on red clay.

Draws and results can be found at the ITF Junior website.

If you are interested in watching college tennis, the first College Match Day is Friday, with the Oklahoma men traveling to Tallahassee to take on Florida State.  The match, which will be held indoors, will be streamed on ESPN 3 at 5 p.m. Eastern. For more on the match, see the Florida State website.

January Aces; Draws for ITA Women's Indoor Posted

An early and brief post today, as I am in College Park, Maryland to speak to parents and provide media training for the Junior Tennis Champions Center coaches and players before heading to the ITA Women's Team Indoor in Charlottesville, Virginia.

My monthly look at top performances is available today at the Tennis Recruiting Network. Without including the eight USTA Winter National champions, I still found 14 standouts to feature in January.

The Boar's Head in Charlottesville, Virginia will again host the ITA Women's Team Indoor

The draws for the Women's Team Indoor have been posted with the seedings as follows:

1. Florida
2. North Carolina
3. Georgia
4. UCLA
5. USC
6. Cal
7. Duke
8. Texas A&M

The seeding does not follow the latest rankings, with Miami, currently No. 9, not being seeded, despite the absence of No. 1 Stanford. Duke, currently ranked No. 10, was given a seed instead.

Friday's first round matches:
Florida vs. host Virginia(14)
North Carolina vs. Vanderbilt(15)
Georgia vs. Miami(9)
UCLA vs. Texas(17)
USC vs. Alabama(12)
Cal vs. Clemson(13)
Duke vs. Michigan(11)
Texas A&M vs. Northwestern(16)

The ITA has done a thorough preview of each team here.  The draw, with times, can be found here.

Texas A&M Women Defeat North Carolina in Chapel Hill; Baker's Dozen of US Girls in Peru ITF Grade 2; Player Development Stalls in South Africa, Indonesia

No. 7 Texas A&M and No. 3 North Carolina met today in Chapel Hill, just three days before the start of the ITA Women's Team Indoor in Charlottesville, Virginia, which I will be covering live beginning Monday, and if the win by the Aggies is any indication, the experimental format may lead to some upsets.

Texas A&M, who reached the NCAA finals last year for the first time in school history, came out on the positive end of the two match tiebreakers that were played and beat the Tar Heels 4-3. Ines Deheza clinched the match for Texas A&M with a 4-6, 6-2, 10-6 victory over Ashley Dai at the No. 4 position, while freshman Saska Gavriloska also captured a point for the Aggies in a match tiebreaker over Hayley Carter at No. 2, 0-6, 6-2, 12-10.  North Carolina won the doubles point and got their two singles points from Jamie Loeb, over Cristina Stancu at No. 1, and Caroline Price, over Anna Mamalat at No. 3, with Texas A&M getting their other points from Stefania Hristov over Kate Vialle at No. 5 and Rutuja Bhosale over Tessa Lyons at No. 6.

For the complete results, see the North Carolina website.

This week's South American ITF tournament is a Grade 2 in Peru, and while most of the US boys have returned to the states, with Logan Smith the only American boy competing this week, 13 American girls are in the 64-player draw, with eight of them seeded. Dasha Ivanova is the top seed, with Madison Bourguignon No. 2, Nicole Frenkel No. 4, Abi Altick No. 5 and Mia Horvit No. 7.  Also seeded are Raquel Pedrza(9), Ellyse Hamlin(10) and Mary Haffey(14).  The other five US girls in the draw are Ally Miller-Krasilnikov, Sara Kelly, Meghan Kelley, Ndindi Mwaruka and Karina Traxler.  All but Mwaruka and Traxler won their first round matches.

For complete draws, see the ITF junior website.

With the globalization of tennis given as the reason the four slam nations no longer dominate the sport, it's easy to assume that all countries have the same level playing field when it comes to development.  But as demonstrated in this article on the decline of South African tennis, which gives the US college system as the only alternative for young players there and provides the shocking news that there are no, as in zero, Futures tournaments scheduled there for this year, it's more complicated than that. Turkey has a Futures tournament practically every week, and that hasn't led to a flood of their players into the Top 100, but it is hard to fathom a country with the kind of history that South Africa has in the sport being bereft of even the lowest level tournaments.

Indonesia doesn't have the same kind of history in the sport, with their current top ATP player ranked 874 and their current top WTA player ranked 602,  but their one past star, Yayuk Basuki, who won six WTA singles titles and was ranked as high as 19 back in 1997, has faced no less frustrating circumstances in trying to find courts for her academy. According to this BBC article, there are no free public courts in the entire country.

"We're not asking for free facilities," Yayuk said. "But if I can subsidise kids who are not wealthy enough to pay, why can't the government also subsidise if they have good facilities?"

The situation means tennis remains known as a sport for the wealthy in the country.

Most children who pick up tennis at a young age come from the upper middle class, who have access to a court at home, or whose family can afford to put them in a club.

Reading articles such as these makes you realize just how many things must go right for just a few good juniors to emerge from countries like these, and how determined those individuals and their coaches must be to stick with the sport in the face of all these obstacles.  Maybe too many choices, which is often cited as a problem in attracting young people to the sport of tennis here in the United States, isn't such a bad problem to have.

Florida Women's Recruiting Class Unanimous Choice for Number One; Pro Circuit Update; Pac-12 Sweeps SEC

Florida's head coach Roland Thornqvist

The Tennis Recruiting Network published its winter women's recruiting class rankings today, and the University of Florida got all 26 votes for No. 1.  Blue chips Brooke Austin, Peggy Porter and Josie Kuhlman are undoubtedly an impressive trio, but they will replace seniors Alex Cercone, Olivia Janowicz and Sofie Oyen, all of whom played integral roles in the Gators two NCAA team titles in 2011 and 2012.  With the transfer of Danielle Collins to Virginia, Florida currently has only seven players on the roster, and as I mentioned a few days ago, six of them, including all three of the seniors, are ranked in the ITA Top 40 nationally.

Last spring's top women's recruiting class was Stanford's, but the Cardinal, with two seniors on the team this year, have not announced any early signings and do not appear in the recruiting class rankings.

The rained-plagued Futures in Palm Coast, Florida managed to finish despite two and a half days of rain, but no Americans made it past the quarterfinals in the singles.  Orange Bowl champion Francis Tiafoe lost at that stage, as did Greg Ouellette(Florida) and Eric Quigley(Kentucky). No. 8 seed Gianni Mina of France, who won the Orange Bowl back in 2009, ended up claiming the soggy title, his first Futures title since 2011, beating unseeded Isak Arvidsson of Sweden 6-2, 6-0 in the final.

Unseeded teenagers Martin Redlicki and Taylor Fritz reached the doubles final, losing to top seeds Markus Eriksson and Milos Sekulic of Sweden 6-1, 6-1 in the championship match late Saturday night.

There were two Challengers on the calendar last week, with Wayne Odesnik of the United States winning the $40,000+hospitality tournament in Panama. The third seed, Odesnik overcame No. 5 seed Jimmy Wang of Taiwan 5-7, 6-4, 6-4 in the final.  Former UCLA Bruin Dan Kosakowski reached the semifinals before losing to Wang.

Juan Spir and Kevin King(Georgia Tech), who will be featured in my upcoming January Aces this week for Tennis Recruiting, won the doubles title in Panama, their second Challenger title. The unseeded pair defeated Puerto Rico's Alex Llompart(Pepperdine) and Mateo Martinez of Argentina, also unseeded, 7-6(5), 6-4 in the final.

In Burnie Australia, Matt Reid of Australian swept the titles, with the No. 5 seed taking the singles over No. 4 seed Hiroki Moriya of Japan 6-3, 6-2 in the final, and teaming with JP Smith(Tennessee) for the doubles, defeating Japan's Toshihide Matsui(BYU-Hawaii) and Thailand's Danai Udomchoke 6-4, 6-2. Smith and Reid were the top seeds, Matsui and Udomchoke were unseeded.  Jarmere Jenkins(Virginia) reached the semifinals, where he lost to Moriya. Jenkins is now up to a ATP career ranking high of 278.  Jenkins is one of the featured players in the Challenger Tennis blog's W.A.T.C.H. list this week.

It's Fed Cup week for the women, so there are no WTA tournaments, and no Pro Circuit events in the US either, with the Midland $100,000 Challenger and a $25,000 tournament in Rancho Santa Fe beginning next week. 

The men have three Challengers, with the $100,000 tournament in Dallas drawing the most Americans.  Qualifying was completed today, with Nick Meister(UCLA), Evan King(Michigan), Dennis Nevolo(Illinois) and Virginia senior Justin Shane advancing to the main draw.  Top seed in the tournament is Michael Russell(Miami). Wild cards went to Jared Donaldson (who lost to Sam Groth in the first round today), Jean Anderson(Texas), who beat Tennys Sandgren(Tennessee) in the first round today, John Mee, who will be joining Texas in the fall and lost to James Magee(NC State) in the first round today, and UCLA's Clay Thompson, who will play Steve Johnson(USC) in the first round Tuesday.

There is a $50,000 Challenger in Chennai India, where Somdev Devvarman(Virginia) is the top seed, and a $50,000 Challenger in Australia, where Bradley Klahn(Stanford) is the top seed.  See the ATP Challenger site for complete draws.

UCLA beat Georgia 4-3, and USC blanked Florida 4-0 Sunday in Los Angeles, to give the two Pac-12 schools a sweep over their SEC opponents over the weeken.  See the UCLA and USC websites for more on the matches, with the Georgia - UCLA match coming down to the final set of the final match.

ITF Junior Rules and Regulations Released for 2014; USTA Struggling to Work Out New Bonus Points

The annual release of the ITF Junior Rules and Regulations is now available at the ITF Junior website. Unlike some years, the changes appear mostly small housekeeping ones, especially for players themselves. Do not take the brief comments below as any sort of official interpretation.  Please read the entire document and contact the ITF at the email address in Appendix Q if you have any questions.

For tournaments, a public liability insurance policy is now required, and for national federation coaches who are traveling and requesting hospitality, there is a registration requirement that will result in a Player Support Team ID.

Three late withdrawals (made after the withdrawal deadline but with ITF notified before the sign-in deadline) are excused and a medical certificate is no longer required for them.

When two matches are required to be played on the same day and the first one was two hours or longer in duration, the rest period is two hours.

The ITF is strongly encouraging the ITF referee be responsible only for that tournament, and not younger age division tournaments that may be played at the same site and time.

The regulations contain a few new references to preserving eligibility for the main draw when it comes to special exemptions, but I'm not familiar enough with the current procedure to comment on what that change entails.

I imagine the following clarification is simply to avoid confusion in selections for Regional Closed Championships: A player who is a dual passport holder must be listed in the ITF database under the nation he/she represents at the Regional Closed Championships.

There is a separate set of regulations for ITF Team Competitions, which include some changes/clarifications for the draws, the new insurance requirement, the number of high-level umpires and "oaths" for players, coaches and officials.

Unfortunately in the Regional competition for North America, there are still only two spots, with one place in the Final 16 going to the host, so when Mexico hosts, that leaves only one spot for the usually strong Canadian and United States teams. The document also contains a complete list of every team's position in every competition from 1991(14s World Junior Tennis) and 1985 (16s Junior Davis Cup and Junior Fed Cup) to the present.

Again, please read through the full documents, which underlines the changes for 2014, and contact the ITF with any questions.

The USTA is grappling with much more dramatic changes now that it has implemented the new Junior Competition schedule, so long debated and discussed the past two years. One particularly contentious issue is the bonus points tables. Lisa Stone at Parenting Aces has been investigating the issues and has gone to the trouble of contacting both TennisLink and Lew Brewer at the USTA to try to understand what the "technical issues" are.

Lisa has also done a thorough review of the USTA Friend at Court for 2014 and discusses the changes in this post. Knowledge is power, as the saying goes.

Loring Wins 800th Match at Indiana; Other College, Davis Cup Notes; Zukas, Fridman Take Titles in Ecuador

Indiana's women's coach Lin Loring collected his 800th victory yesterday here in Kalamazoo, when his Hoosiers beat the Western Michigan Broncos 5-2. Loring, in his 37th season with Indiana, is the only coach in women's tennis to reach that milestone.  For more on the match and Loring's thoughts on that astounding number, see this article from the Indiana website.

Blue chip Katrine Steffensen, who is No. 44 in the current ITF junior rankings,  has committed to Princeton for this coming fall. For more on Steffensen's decision, see this article at the Tennis Recruiting Network.

Blue chip and reigning Winter National 18s champion Logan Staggs will be attending Northwestern this fall, and he is the subject of this feature in the Stockton, California Record.

At the Pac-12/SEC men's tennis challenge in Los Angeles, the Southern California schools went 2-0, with No. 2 UCLA defeating No. 11 Florida 4-1 and No. 4 USC beating No. 3 Georgia 4-0.  UCLA will play Georgia and USC faces Florida on Sunday.

The No. 2 Florida women were in Waco to play No. 19 Baylor, and the Gators swept the Bears 7-0.  I didn't realize, until I looked at the box score, that all six of Florida's starters are ranked in the Top 40 nationally.  I also stumbled across the news today that Lauren Embree had hip surgery last month, and will be out for several months, so she has accepted a position as volunteer assistant for her former team.  For more on Lauren's surgery and recovery, see her blog for Athletic DNA.

In Davis Cup action today, current Ole Miss No. 1 Nik Scholtz defeated ATP No. 276 Benjamin Balleret of Monaco 7-5, 7-6(4), 3-6, 3-6, 6-3 , to help South Africa take a 2-1 lead in their World Group II tie.  Rain and darkness saw the match, which was to have been completed on Friday, resumed on Saturday, and Scholtz's win pulled South Africa even. Australian Open men's doubles finalist Raven Klaasen and former University of Illinois player Ruan Roelofse then won the doubles point to give South Africa the 2-1 advantage.  For more on Scholtz's win, see the Ole Miss website.

There were three NCAA doubles champions on the court today in San Diego for the Great Britain - USA doubles match.  Mike and Bob Bryan, who won the NCAAs for Stanford back in 1998, got the USA on the board, beating Colin Fleming and Dom Inglot, who won the NCAAs with Michael Shabaz for Virginia in 2009, 6-2, 6-3, 3-6, 6-1. Inglot was playing in his first Davis Cup tie, having been substituted in for Andy Murray, who was rested for his singles match with Sam Querrey Sunday. For more on today's match, see this article from the BBC.

At the ITF Grade I in Ecuador, No. 4 seed Olga Fridman of Ukraine won her third straight title at that level and her 16th straight match, beating No. 9 seed Usue Arconada of the US 6-4, 6-1.  It was Arconada's first Grade 1 final in singles.  Matias Zukas of Argentina, the No. 2 seed, won the boys title, defeating top seed and doubles partner Nicolas Alvarez of Peru 6-7(2), 6-2, 1-3, retired. Zukas and Alvarez won the doubles title, with the top seeds defeating unseeded Marcelo Barrios Vera of Chile and Juan Jose Rosas of Peru 6-2, 6-2.
The girls doubles title went to Luisa Stefani of Brazil and Renata Zarazua of Mexico, the No. 4 seeds, who beat top seeds Rafaella Baquerizo and Domenica Gonzalez of Ecuador 6-1, 3-6, 10-7.