USTA Announces Annual Australian Open Wild Card Challenge Events; Nakashima, Zhu and Stewart Beat Top Seeds in First Round of $25K Events; Varsity Blues Articles Explore Fallout of College Admission Scandal

The USTA's annual Australian Wild Card Challenge begins next week for the women and on October 28th for the men, with the tournaments included in the race for the most ATP and WTA points announced today.

The women's events, with the best THREE results counting in the race, are:

Week of October 21: USTA Pro Circuit / ITF World Tennis Tour W80s: Macon, Ga.; Poitiers, France; ITF World Tennis Tour W60s: Saguenay, Canada. Week of October 28: USTA Pro Circuit W80: Tyler, Texas; ITF World Tennis Tour W60s: Toronto, Canada; Liuzhou, China; Nantes, France. Week of November 4: USTA Pro Circuit W60 Event: Las Vegas; ITF World Tennis Tour W100: Shenzhen, China. Week of November 11: WTA $125,000 Series Events: Houston, Texas; Taipei; ITF World Tennis Tour W100: Tokyo.

I'm sure the USTA is as happy as anyone that Coco Gauff has recently moved her ranking into the Top 100 (she's currently 71) and will not need a wild card into the Australian Open.

The men's events, with the best TWO results counting in the race are:

• Week of October 28: ATP Masters 1000 Paris; ATP Challenger 110: Shenzhen, China; USTA Pro Circuit / ATP Challenger 80s: Charlottesville, Va.; Playford, Australia.
• Week of November 4: ATP Challenger 110: Bratislava, Slovakia; USTA Pro Circuit / ATP Challenger 80s: Knoxville, Tenn.; Kobe, Japan.
• Week of November 11: ATP Challenger 125: Houston; USTA Pro Circuit / ATP Challenger 80s: Champaign, Ill.; Helsinki, Finland; Ortisei, Italy; Pune, India.

Last year's winners were Jack Sock, who earned all his points at the Masters in Paris, and Whitney Osuigwe, who won the Tyler Texas $80K and reached the quarterfinals at the WTA 125 in Houston.

For more, see this article from usta.com.

The top seeds all went out in the first round today at the $25,000 men's and women's tournament in Waco Texas and the $25,000 women's tournament in Florence South Carolina.  In Texas, 18-year-old wild card Brandon Nakashima(Virginia) needed just 55 minutes to roll past No. 1 seed Gijs Brouwer of the Netherlands 6-0, 6-2 and Amy Zhu(Michigan) took out No. 1 seed Katherine Sebov of Canada 2-6, 6-3, 6-4.   In South Carolina Katarina Stewart defeated top seed and former WTA Top 50 player Johanna Larsson of Sweden 6-3, 6-4 and wild card Kennedy Shaffer(Georgia) ousted No. 3 seed Ellie Halbauer 6-3, 6-3.

Former Texas men's coach Michael Center is scheduled to be sentenced and the end of this month for his involvement in the Varsity Blues scandal that shook Division I athletics this spring. When the story of Rick Singer's scheme to get his clients' children into prestigious schools while representing them as potential student-athletes first broke, there was wide agreement that other misconduct would be discovered, as those charged would cooperate in a continuing investigation.

Nothing on the scale of the first revelations has surfaced, but there was another arrest of a parent last month, with tennis at least on the periphery of Xiaoning Sui's quest to get her son into UCLA. This lengthy article by ProPublica focuses on two Southern California high school teammates, one a viable college prospect and the other not, with the latter ending up at Georgetown. Although it centers on these two boys and their families, the article also provides a great deal of background on how the process worked, as well as explanations of how wealthy families often raise their odds of gaining admission, without resorting to hiring someone as dubious as Singer.  The University of Texas also released a report last month about how their admission process failed to prevent an unqualified student-athlete from getting a books scholarship and then quitting the team but remaining as a student at the university.