Inside Junior Tennis Podcast; Tomic Gets Qualifying Wildcard; Morgan Invited to Roehampton

It's been well over a month since Kevin McClure and I have been able to get together for a podcast, so it's no surprise that this edition is nearly an hour long. With the Eddie Herr, the Orange Bowl, the Junior Orange Bowl and the Winter Nationals to discuss, we couldn't get too deeply into the tournaments and their winners, but I think we hit most of the high points.

We did discuss Bernard Tomic's decision to play the 16s rather than the 18s at the Orange Bowl, and about the pressure he will face during the Australian Open juniors, and that was before it was announced today that he had received a wild card into the men's qualifying. Linda Pearce of The Age has the story here.

The first of the three major ITF junior tournaments in Australia has progressed to the quarterfinals. Top seed Ryan Harrison lost in the second round, but No. 6 seed Ty Trombetta is still alive. No U.S. girls are competing.

The acceptances for the Australian Open Juniors, published last week, suggest that the trip is too far and too expensive to draw many U.S. competitors. American boys in the main draw are Harrison, Trombetta, Bradley Klahn and Mateusz Kecki, with Bob Van Overbeek and Alex Domijan listed as qualifiers. The U.S. girls are even fewer. Madison Brengle and Alexa Guarachi are in the main, with Lauren McHale, Danielle Mills and Monica Yajima in qualifying.

Of the ITF Top Ten, only three boys--Cesar Ramirez (4), Jerzy Janowicz (5) and Daniel Evans (10) and four girls--defending champion Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (2), Ksenia Lykina (8), Nikola Hofmanova (9) and Brengle (10) are playing the Australian Open Junior Championships, which has difficulty drawing fields comparable to those at other junior slams.

Junior Orange Bowl 14s champion George Morgan is profiled by The Telegraph which explains his next step as an audience with Paul Annacone at the LTA's Roehampton Training Centre. There can't be a British tennis article without a reference to Andy Murray of course, but does anyone else think this sentence is a little off?

When Murray won the same title for under-12s he said it was only then that he realised he could make it as a player.

Tags: Inside Junior Tennis, Bernard Tomic, George Morgan, Australian Open, junior tennis, Colette Lewis

Holiday Tennis Classic; Winter Nationals Updates

First Andy left a comment about it, then I got an email about it, and then I discovered this blog entry about the Georgia Tech Holiday Challenge held earlier this week in Atlanta. With Don Johnson, Donald Young, Ellis Ferreira (doubles only) and Bobby Reynolds participating, the level was obviously very high. Reynolds didn't win the singles. Click here to see who did. Don Kintner is going to get some disagreement about the best free tennis tournament (it has to be US Open qualifying, as noted by several commenters), but check out his blog "Hangin' Around the Court" and encourage him to write about the dual matches he attends this spring.

The Tennis Recruiting Network's Julie Wrege was in Arizona for the Winter Nationals and filed this wrap-up yesterday. Mike Henry of the Bradenton Herald writes about Sekou Bangoura's two 16s titles in Scottsdale here and the Tampa Tribune had this brief article on Alexandra Cercone's 18s win.

Tags: Colette Lewis, junior tennis, Georgia Tech, Don Kintner, The Tennis Recruiting Network, USTA Winter Championships

ITF Doubles Format Change for Grade A and Grade 1 Junior Tournaments

My suspicions regarding the change in the format for junior doubles was confirmed yesterday by the ITF, and if I had looked a little more diligently, I could have seen it on the ITF junior website. The announcement, with a posted date of 11/13/07, can be viewed here.

In Grade A and Grade 1 tournaments, no-ad scoring will be used, and split-set matches will be decided by the match tiebreaker. This includes the junior Grand Slams, who can opt out if they so choose.

There's absolutely no question that this is the way doubles is going on all levels above the juniors. In September, the ITF Futures circuit adopted the no-ad, match tiebreaker format and the WTA also converted to it this summer. This is not my personal preference--I could live with the match tiebreaker, but I hate no-ad scoring--but I recognize that shortening matches on the professional level has its attraction. Many of the reasons for moving in this direction, however, involve television and money, and those are not considerations for junior tournaments. Professional tournament directors want more stars playing doubles, and see doubles "specialists" as an expense they could do without. The ITF, on the other hand, sees its role in the juniors as preparing players for the next level, and this leads to its current quandary.

In 2004, the ITF introduced a "combined ranking" which includes both singles and doubles results to rank a player. According to the ITF website, "the introduction of the Combined Junior Ranking aims to encourage the doubles game at junior level and subsequently at professional level" (emphasis mine). This change has worked at the junior level, with more highly-ranked juniors playing doubles now, and from a development standpoint, it doesn't hurt to have another venue for a junior to work on his or her game. The USTA has started to combine rankings this year hoping to spur more doubles play on the national level.

But the professionals don't have combined rankings. There are singles rankings and doubles rankings and you get into tournaments based on those separate numbers. And the ITF certainly sees that the erosion of doubles is here and is a fact of life on the professional tour. It's why they've instituted this change for the high-level junior events, where future pros are most likely to play. But they are trying to have it both ways: trying to boost the importance of doubles by including it the singles rankings and to diminish it by going to this abbreviated scoring. The sensible thing to do is to abandon the combined ranking, which gives doubles prominence it no longer commands.

Cohen to Play for University of Florida

Julia Cohen and I didn't cross paths in Florida last month, and when she emailed me that she had committed to a college, but didn't say which one, I was eager to talk to her about the decision. With contemporaries Ashley Weinhold and Kim Couts going the pro route, I suspected Cohen would too, but in our conversation, she explained that while that is her ultimate goal, she thought time in college would only benefit her. My Tennis Recruiting Network story on her decision to start classes next week in Gainesville is here and preempts my usual First Thursday Aces post, which will appear on Monday instead.

Cohen called me from New York where she was playing in the USTA National Indoor Open, winning the women's singles title without loss of a set. Marcia Frost of collegeandjuniortennis.com has a report on the tournament here.

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Winter Nationals Winners

I've never been to the Winter Nationals, because of its location and timing, so the attached photos of (most of) yesterday's winners and finalists are from my photo archives. I've tried to clearly label the year and tournament where they were taken. As I've mentioned before, there's almost no local newspaper coverage in Scottsdale and Tucson, so this slideshow is about all I can contribute.

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U.S. Teams for Teen Tennis and Les Petits As Tournaments

The USTA has selected the players traveling to Europe later this month to participate in these two prestigious 14-and-under tournaments.

The girls team, coached by Jay Berger [1/2/08 correction: it is Jai DiLouie coaching the girls] will consist of Breaunna Addison, Kyle McPhillips, Grace Min and Chanelle Van Nguyen.

Coached by Kent Kinnear, the boys team is: Reo Asami, Robert Livi, John Harrison Richmond and Alexios Halebian.

Christian Harrison decided not to play those events again this year.

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