Georgia Tech Graduate Martin Beats Top Seed Kypson, Bigun Wins Opener at Las Vegas Challenger; Maya Joint Turns Down $146K to Join Texas

It's been three weeks since there has been any action on the USTA Pro Circuit due to the US Open, and the women are still without a tournament, sending many of those seeking competition in North America to this week's W35 in the Dominican Republic.

The men have an ATP Challenger 75 in Las Vegas this week, with qualifying concluding on Monday, with six former collegians, all from the United States, advancing to the main draw: Collin Altamirano(Virginia), Omni Kumar(Duke), Quinn Vandecasteele(Oregon), Patrick Maloney(Michigan), Trey Hilderbrand(UCF, Texas A&M) and Alex Rybakov(TCU). With the six US qualifiers, a total of 22 Americans are competing in the 32-player draw.

Vandecasteele is the only qualifier to win his first round match so far, defeating Luke Saville of Australia 6-2, 7-5, but Altamirano, Kumar and Maloney have yet to play, with their matches tonight.  

Rybakov gave No. 3 seed Learner Tien(USC) a battle in their first round match today, but the two-time Kalamazoo champion won the two-hour 41-minute contest 6-7(6), 6-2, 6-2.

Two of the three wild cards have advanced to the second round, with Arizona senior Colton Smith beating Christian Langmo(Miami) 6-1, 6-3 and ITF junior No. 2 Kaylan Bigun, who is scheduled to begin at UCLA in January, beating former Bruin Govind Nanda 6-4, 6-4. Ohio State graduate JJ Tracy, the third wild card recipient, lost to former teammate Cannon Kingsley 5-7, 7-6(0), 6-3.

Bigun served for the match at 5-3 in the second set, but had all sorts of trouble with his serve, making only one first serve, double faulting twice and ending the game with an unforced error.

Nanda couldn't take advantage of that gift however, missing a forehand wide at 30-all, and failing to come up with a volley at the net on match point. Roland Garros champion Bigun, who lost in the US Open junior quarterfinals on Thursday to eventual champion Rafael Jodar of Spain after leading 5-3 in the third, will face the winner of the late match between Maloney and No. 4 seed Brandon Holt(USC).

It's the second main draw Challenger win for Bigun, who also advanced to the second round of April's Sarasota Challenger as a qualifier.

Recent Georgia Tech graduate Andres Martin won his second ATP Challenger main draw match of the year today, and it was a big one, with the 23-year-old from Georgia taking out top seed Patrick Kypson(Texas A&M) 6-3, 1-6, 6-1. Martin will play Vandecasteele in the second round.

With Sunday the deadline for declaring whether they would accept the prize money from their performance at the US Open, quite a few juniors had a difficult decision to make. Iva Jovic, who is only 16 and has not committed to attend college, would not reveal the direction she was leaning, but as she has yet to enroll, Jovic can claim all her expenses and as much as $10,000 for the year, if she has not already done so. The WTA site has her current earnings for 2024 at more than $170,000. 

Fifteen-year-old Julieta Pareja, who reached the final round of women's qualifying as a wild card, won $58,000, yet with college tennis three years away, is probably not making a decision that would rule out that option for her, as her stellar results have come primarily in the last several months. Whether the NCAA will still have the power to deny her or any of the juniors who have earned substantial prize money at the US Open their earnings, next year, let alone in three years is certainly debatable.

Matthew Forbes, the Kalamazoo champion, will leave his $100,000 with the USTA, and as he was already enrolled at Michigan State, he does not get the $10,000 that juniors are allowed, and could only claim expenses.

Maya Joint is in a similar position, as the WTA No. 111 had already enrolled at Texas, and had until two days ago to decide whether to take the $146,657 she received for qualifying and winning a round in the main draw. The injunction hearing in the Reese Brantmeier case, which asked for a ruling on whether the NCAA could continue to prohibit student-athletes from collecting prize money and still retain their eligibility, was on August 15. Almost a month later, the judge has not made a determination on granting the injunction.

The USTA told me that they were not getting in between the NCAA and the courts, and that their rules of accepting the prize money by the final day of the tournament would continue to be enforced, regardless of the pending legal case.

This article today from the Washington Post (available to everyone via this gift link) provides all the relevant details on Joint's decision to relinquish the prize money in order to play for Texas. If you read the comments on the article, you will notice many people, most of them not versed in college tennis compliance, I'm sure, suggest the USTA hold the money in a trust and make it available when the player declares herself a professional, but that is not something the USTA has ever pursued, despite the outcry last year when Fiona Crawley of North Carolina raised the issue and the obvious movement of the NCAA toward student-athlete compensation via the introduction of Name, Image and Likeness income.

This is not a new issue, although the obvious disparity between quarterbacks or point guards and non-revenue athletes is a twist that wasn't present in 2012, when Mallory Burdette of Stanford faced a similar choice.

I wrote about Burdette's decision to turn pro after reaching the third round of the US Open after her junior year at Stanford in this article for the Tennis Recruiting Network. She was required to declare her amateur status before the tournament began, but was not prohibited from taking the $65,000 she had earned when she changed her mind:

"You just check a box at the beginning of the tournament that says you are playing as an amateur," Burdette said. "But I went in and I talked to the tournament referee Brian Earley and he walked me through the process. He basically said it's not a problem if you want to take the money. You obviously realize you're giving up your scholarship and your last year of NCAA eligibility, but the money's there and it's yours if you would like to take it."

I don't think that declaration is still required anywhere on the Pro Circuit, in a nod to the $10,000 allowance introduced for junior players, but obviously the impetus to find a means for distributing the money to the players who have earned it but want to play college tennis does not exist at the levels of the USTA or the US Open where change could be made.

I'm old enough to remember when the push to allow professionals at the Olympics was seen as armageddon, but the Olympics have certainly not suffered, and have indeed been enhanced, by the top stars like Steph Curry and Novak Djokovic competing in them. 

This may all be settled within the next year, before the 2025 US Open, but all the prospective and current student-athletes who competed in this year's event deserve better.

As a side note, I've recently had problems with the template on this site, and the "post a comment" option has disappeared. I am trying to investigate the pros and cons of a newer template, but in the meantime, you can still comment by clicking on the "Comments" link on the bottom of each post. Just make sure you use some sort of name, not the anonymous option.