Vidmanova Wins First W75 in Sumter; Smith Falls in Birmingham 125 Final; Collegians Tarvet and Taylor Claim SoCal Pro Series Titles; Judge Approves NCAA House Settlement

Vidmanova en route to her NCAA singles title last fall

Less than a month ago, Dasha Vidmanova was completing her illustrious college tennis career by leading the University of Georgia women to an NCAA team title, their first since 2000, with a 4-0 win over Texas A&M.

The 22-year-old from the Czech Republic, the Most Outstanding Player of the Team Championships and the 2024 NCAA spring doubles and fall singles champion, has now won two consecutive titles on the ITF women's World Tennis Tour after beating LSU rising sophomore Cadence Brace of Canada 7-5, 6-1 in today's final of the USTA Pro Circuit W75 in Sumter South Carolina.

Vidmanova is  undefeated as a pro; after winning the W35 in the Dominican Republic two weeks ago in her first event since graduating, she now has won ten matches in a row, with the W75 her sixth Pro Circuit singles title and her first over the W35 level.

With the 110 points from these last two weeks posting tonight, her WTA ranking tomorrow will be 241, putting her in position to get into US Open qualifying with just a few more good performances in tournaments this summer.

At the ATP Challenger 125 in Birmingham England, recent University of Arizona graduate Colton Smith reached the final of his first tournament on grass (he did not play any ITF junior tournaments outside of North America and didn't crack the Top 100 in the ITF junior rankings, so did not qualify for Roehamption or Wimbledon) with a 6-3, 6-4 win today over Rinky Hijikata(UNC) of Australia. His win in that semifinal match, which Smith led 6-3 when rain and darkness suspended it Saturday, provided Smith with his sixth ATP Top 100 victory. He lost in the final, 6-4, 6-4, to Otto Virtanen of Finland, who had completed his semifinal match on Saturday, but Smith will break into the ATP Top 150 with his run this week. He has a special exemption into the main draw of the Challenger 125 in Ilkley, where he'll play 2019 Wimbledon boys champion Shintaro Mochizuki of Japan in the first round. 

At the ATP Challenger 75 in Tyler Texas, qualifier Yibing Wu won his sixth Challenger title, with the 2017 US Open boys champion winning the second all-Chinese challenger final with a 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 win over Yi Zhou. The oft-injured 25-year-old, whose ATP career-high is 54, will return to the Top 300, while the 20-year-old Zhou will be inside the Top 300 for the first time.

The final title claimed at Roland Garros this year was a long time coming, with Carlos Alcaraz of Spain defending his title with a  five-hour, 29-minute 4-6, 6-7(4), 6-4, 7-6(3), 7-6(2) win over Jannik Sinner of Italy. Alcaraz saved three match points serving at 3-5, 0-40 in the fourth set, broke Sinner and won the tiebreaker to send it to a fifth set. Sinner served for the match in that set as well, again at 5-4, and again he was broken, with Alcaraz finding another unfathomable gear in that game and the tiebreaker to win his first match from two sets down and his fifth major, at the age of 22.

The women's doubles final before the men's final also went the distance, with No. 2 seeds Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini of Italy defeating unseeded Aleksandra Kunic of Serbia and Anna Danilina(Florida) of Kazakhstan 6-4, 2-6, 6-1 for their first major title as a team. Errani has five women's doubles titles with Roberta Vinci; this is Paolini's first, although they did win the Olympic gold medal last summer. Errani won her second mixed doubles title with Andrea Vavassori Thursday.

Two current collegians took advantage of their summer break to earn titles at the SoCal Pro Series, with University of San Diego's Oliver Tarvet of Great Britain and Arizona State's Lily Taylor of Australia getting victories today at the $15,000 tournaments at USD.

The fifth-seeded Tarvet, a rising senior who has been one of the top players in college tennis since arriving in San Diego in 2022, didn't lose a set all week en route to the men's final, and then didn't lose a game in today's championship match, beating No. 7 seed Leo Vithoontien(Carleton) of Japan 6-0, 6-0. Vithoontien had won his previous two matches in third set tiebreakers, and made the doubles final, which surely took a toll. It's the fifth singles title on the ITF men's World Tennis Tour for Tarvet, who also won a SoCal Pro Series tournament last year.

It's the first Pro Circuit title for the 18-year-old Taylor, a rising sophomore at Arizona State who played at lines 3 and 4 for the Sun Devils in her freshman year. Unseeded, Taylor didn't drop a set until the women's final, with No. 8 seed and Duke recruit Aspen Schuman also reaching the final without the loss of set.  Schuman won the first, but Taylor rebounded for a 5-7, 6-2, 6-1 victory.

In the women's doubles finals Saturday, No. 3 seeds Lily Fairclough(USC) of Australia and Anita Sahdiieva(Baylor, LSU) of Ukraine defeated unseeded Mao Mushika(Cal) and Kristina Nordikyan(USD) 6-2, 6-1 in the championship match.

The men's doubles title went to No. 2 seeds Keshav Chopra(Georgia Tech) and Phillip Jordan(South Carolina, UC-Santa Barbara), who beat the unseeded pair of Vithoontien and Matt Kuhar(Bryant) 6-3, 7-6(5) in the final. 

For quotes from the finalists, see this recap from USTA SoCal's Steve Pratt.

Late Friday, Judge Claudia Wilken announced her decision to approve the House settlement, which provides the framework for colleges and universities to begin sharing revenue with student-athletes. The roster limits that Wilken was concerned about did not jettison the settlement, as she accepted the compromise proposed by the plantiffs that would allow schools to keep those roster spots already occupied or promised, although they are not required to do so. Going forward, tennis will have a maximum of ten roster spots, with scholarships allowed to be full or partial for those ten spots. How this settlement will impact college tennis and other Olympic sports remains to be seen. An overview of what this could mean for college sports when it begins July 1, from Ross Delenger of Yahoo Sports, can be found here.