Qualifying Complete at International Spring Championships

©Colette Lewis 2009--
Carson, CA--

It was a stress-free travel day, with flight, luggage, car rental and hotel check-in all going well. The weather was beautiful when we arrived: cloudless, 75 degrees, a slight breeze. Our first meal was In-n-Out Burger and we saw the Goodyear blimp practicing takeoffs and landings, so it was almost like a brief vacation before the start of these two major back-to-back championships in Southern California.

The 16s draws have been posted (and re-posted), Monday's Order of Play has been released and the qualifiers have been determined, with the 18s draws just being added. The qualifiers in the boys 16s: Shuhei Shibahara, Drew Dawson, Lestter Yeh, Pilki Min, Nathan Rakitt, Jonathan Lo, Luca Corinteli and Dylan Trent. In the girls 16s qualifiers are: Samantha Crawford, Sarah Gong, Alexa Anton-Ohlmeyer, Alexis Pereira, Brianna Morgan, Juliana Cardi, Ki Kim and Karen Ataian.

In the boys 18s, Warren Hardie, Clarke Spinosa, Brian Fang, Daniel Hoffman, Austin Smith, Zachary Leslie, Shaun Bernstein and Joshua Tchan have qualified. The girls 18s qualifiers are: Arianna Colffer, Nikki Sanders, Kayla Rizzolo, Tayler Davis, Lorraine Guillermo, Maria Belaya, Lynda Xepoleas and Sarah Pham.

For the ISC TennisLink site, click here. For the USTA ITF page, click here.

It's a full day on Monday, with eight matches scheduled for nearly every court, so follow via Twitter, or check the Twitter updates in the sidebar.

Tags: junior tennis, USTA ITF International Spring Championships, Colette Lewis

Travel Day; NY Times Asks What's Wrong with U.S. Tennis

We're off to Southern California today for the International Spring Championships/Easter Bowl fortnight. I plan on posting late Sunday with a link to the draws and to check in on whose has qualified in Carson, but in the meantime, here is a story from the New York Times entitled "U.S. Tennis Losing Ground in Developing Players." There isn't much new here, but there are some quotes from Pete Fischer, Sampras's former coach, and Martin Blackman; it's the first time I've seen Blackman publicly quoted in his new USTA position.

Ray Benton, who took over for Blackman at the Junior Champions Tennis Center in College Park, says:

"Kids should learn to play tennis exactly the way they learn to play basketball.”

But Neil Amdur doesn't explain the context of that comment, so I'm not sure what Benton means. And wow, I'd be surprised if tennis is missing out because the best athletes are flocking to lacrosse, especially the girls.

Tags: junior tennis, New York Times, Martin Blackman, Colette Lewis

Melichar, Efferding Win in College Station; Pegula Beats Panova in MPS Qualifying; Rafter, Molik To Coach Australian Jr. Davis & Fed Cups

The Grade 4 ITF in College Station wrapped up today, with No. 13 seed Nicole Melichar and No. 12 seed Jeremy Efferding winning their first ITF titles. Efferding, 15, defeated No. 6 seed Shane Vinsant 6-4, 6-0 in singles, and also beat him in doubles. Efferding and Andrew Korinek defeated Vinsant and Spencer Newman 4-6, 6-0, 10-7.

Melichar, also 15, beat unseeded Hideko Tachibana 3-6, 6-3, 6-3, and I believe, by making the final Melichar earned a Special Exempt spot in the International Spring Championships in Carson. Melichar had reached the final of another Texas ITF last October, losing to Elizabeth Begley, but one of the players she defeated along the way, Jessica Pegula, had an even bigger win than Melichar today.

Pegula, who received a wild card into the qualifying for the $220,000 WTA event in Ponte Vedra Beach, defeated 20-year-old Alexandra Panova of Russia, ranked 181, 6-3, 6-0. Pegula, also 15, gets former Wimbledon finalist Marion Bartoli, ranked 13th, in her next qualifying match. Bartoli was down 6-1, 3-1 to Lauren Albanese today, but rallied for a 1-6, 7-6(5), 6-4 win. Alison Riske, who won a qualifying wild card in a tournament last month, lost in the first round, as did Gabriela Paz. Melanie Oudin won her opening qualifying match against Anna Tatishvili. For the qualifying draw, see the MPS Group website. For the College Station results, see the TennisLink site.

A trio of Texas boys got an opportunity to play qualifying at the U.S. Clay Court Championships today, but none were able to make an impact. Harry Fowler, Ben Chen and Daniel Whitehead all fell in straight sets in today's first round. Filip Krajinovic of Serbia did win his opening match in qualifying. For full results, see the ATP draws.

Tennis Australia has gotten some big names to coach their Junior Davis Cup and Junior Fed Cup teams, with Patrick Rafter and Alicia Molik being selected to work with the top 16-and-under players for the upcoming international competition. For more details, see the ITF junior website.

Tags: junior tennis, Nicole Melichar, Jeremy Efferding, Jessica Pegula, College Station ITF, MPS Group, Tennis Australia, Colette Lewis

IMG Becomes Player in College Sports Landscape; Gottfried Hired at Bollettieri's

Wednesday's USA Today featured a lengthy article on IMG's increasing influence in college athletics. Most of the discussion of their role revolves around the revenue-producing sports of football and basketball, but later in the story, college golf and tennis were mentioned.

Iowa faculty athletics representative Elizabeth Altmaier, a consultant to a group of 11 college presidents constituting the recent NCAA Task Force on Commercial Activity in Division I Intercollegiate Athletics, says IMG's circle of interests and the presence of its employees on campuses, as typically occurs at partner schools, creates a shadow.

IMG limiting its large-volume athlete representation to golfers and tennis players "does not allay my concerns about commercialism or amateurism at all," she says. "In fact (tennis and golf) are where the greatest pressures are coming for actual pay for play in the collegiate ranks." For example, there recently have been NCAA legislative proposals to allow athletes in individual sports to accept prize money won in open events as long as the amount doesn't exceed the athlete's expenses.

As for IMG's campus presence, she says, "I would regard that as a significant potential for a conflict of interest, and the difficulty comes about in determining who is ensuring that an actual conflict of interest does not occur — and I don't at this point know that I could identify that person or those persons."

Of course, the fact is that amateur tennis players can already offset expenses with payments from "open" tournaments they compete in, although I believe this is a reference to that tabled proposal that would have allowed pre-collegians to accept up to $10,000 prior to beginning their college careers.

Is IMG getting an unfair advantage if it signs a deal with a school for say, TV rights? Is that likely to result in potential professionals automatically signing with IMG?

Not according to IMG's George Pyne.

Even with IMG signing Georgia quarterback and potential No. 1 NFL draft pick Matthew Stafford in February to a marketing representation deal, Pyne says, "It's a legitimate question … if we were labor negotiators who were trying to sign up people in bulk on college campuses. We look for the select people who are iconic properties and try to provide marketing services. I'm never going to say it will never be a possibility, but so far it hasn't presented itself." Pyne also says IMG rarely signs college golfers or tennis players; it generally signs athletes in those sports earlier in their careers.

Because, unlike the team pro sports, there is no minimum age for a professional in those sports.

Tennis Week recently posted an interview with Brian Gottfried, who has joined the staff at IMG/Bollettieri's Tennis Academy in Bradenton, on a part-time basis. He and Brad Gilbert, who is also coming to Bradenton for regular coaching work, couldn't be less alike, but there's no doubt they both love tennis and are talented tennis minds.

And to make this a completely IMG post, the Bradenton Herald had this story on the Bradenton facility and its economic impact on the area, as well as its recent push to get more NFL players there to train in the off-season.

Tags: college tennis, IMG, Brian Gottfried, Nick Bollettieri, Colette Lewis

March Aces; High School Tennis; College Station ITF

The first Thursday of the month means that it's time for my monthly Aces, which can be found here at The Tennis Recruiting Network. TRN has had a lot of great college commitment stories recently, and they will continue to post frequent features through the end of next week, so check the site often throughout April 10th.

High school tennis season is now approaching or underway in many states, and there have been several interesting preview stories recently. Last month, the Ventura County Star's Rhiannon Potkey previewed the Thousand Oaks High School boys team, which will feature three blue chips: Kyle McMorrow, Denis Lin and Marcos Giron. (I believe Potkey is mistaken in identifying Lin as a USC recruit; he signed an NLI with Stanford last fall.) The Chicago Sun-Times talks with Denis Bogatov of Warren High about his prospects of repeating as state high school champion in Illinois. And the Washington Post has this abbreviated look at high school tennis prospects in their area.

The first U.S. ITF of the year is drawing to a close in College Station, Texas, with the singles semifinals set for Friday. No. 12 seed Jeremy Efferding plays No. 13 Victor Gonzalez of Mexico and No. 6 seed Shane Vinsant faces unseeded Chase Curry in the boys semifinals; in the girls semis, unseeded Hideko Tachibana and Belinda Niu are one pairing, while unseeded Stephanie Nauta plays No. 13 seed Nicole Melichar. The girls doubles final has already been played, with No. 2 seeds Cierra J. Gaytan-Leach and Millie Nichols taking a 7-6(6), 6-2 decision from No. 3 seeds Brynn Boren and Alexandra Leatu. For complete draws, see the TennisLink site.

In college tennis, there's a key Big 12 men's matchup this evening, with No. 7 Baylor visiting No. 11 Texas. You can follow the action via Texas College Tennis's twitter updates, or read the wrap at the TCT blog.

Tags: college tennis, junior tennis, The Tennis Recruiting Network, College Station ITF, Texas, Baylor, Colette Lewis

USTA Junior National Team Drops 4-3 Decision to USC Men; Querrey Tries Coaching

The USTA brought out its heavy-hitting coaching lineup and most of the members of the 2008 ITF World Junior Davis Cup champion team, but it wasn't quite enough against one of the top college teams in the country yesterday. Although undermanned, the sixth-ranked Trojans still came away with a 4-3 win, winning the doubles point handily and earning wins at No. 4, 2 and 3 singles before the juniors came back to take the final three singles matches.

Watching scores change on the USC website last night, I couldn't see who was on the court coaching, but I later heard from USTA National Coach David Roditi that in addition to himself, the USTA had Jose Higueras, David Nainkin, Hugo Armando, Marc Lucero and Sam Querrey giving advice to the juniors.

"We had a pretty good coaching staff," Roditi said. "Sam Querrey came and coached JT against Magdas."

JT is of course JT Sundling, who has committed to USC for the fall, and who, like Querrey, is from Thousand Oaks, California. Playing No. 2 singles against Trojan senior Abdullah Magdas, Sundling had an early lead, but lost 7-5, 6-3.

With the way the doubles point went, Roditi was happy just to be in the singles matches, let alone win three of them, with USC winning the doubles 8-0 at No. 1 and No. 2 and 8-4 at No. 3.

"I'll tell you what my pep talk was after the doubles," Roditi said. "I said, guys, I have good news and I have bad news. The bad news is we're down 1-0. The good news is, it's not a total of games. These guys won 24-4, and all they got was one point. There's still six points out there."

And as it turned out, those six points were divided, as were first sets.

At No. 1, Denis Kudla, who led the U.S. team to the Junior Davis Cup title last September, took a 7-5 first set from Steve Johnson of USC, who was moved into the top spot due to the back injuries of Robert Farah and Jaak Poldma. At No. 6, Clay Thompson won a tiebreaker against USC's Dan Gliner, and at No. 5, Nathan Pasha battled past Trojan Daniel Nguyen 6-4.

In addition to Magdas at No. 2, USC had taken the first set at No. 3, with Jason McNaughton getting past Kalamazoo 16s champion Jordan Cox 6-3, and Matt Kecki edging Raymond Sarmiento 7-5. Cox and Sarmiento were members of the USTA's Junior Davis Cup team, with Cox playing in North American qualifying and Sarmiento in the finals in Mexico, but another prominent JDC member, Evan King, just arrived in California on Tuesday from the clay court swing in Brazil, and Roditi didn't feel he was physically prepared to take on the California hard courts with no more than hours to adjust to a new surface and time zone.

The singles matches all went as the first sets did. Kecki got USC's second point, beating Sarmiento 7-5, 6-1, Magdas downed Sundling 7-5, 6-3 and McNaughton completed his 6-3, 6-3 win over Cox to clinch it for the Trojans. Nathan Pasha got the USTA boys on the board with a 6-4, 6-1 victory over Nguyen, with Thompson winning their second point by scoring a 7-6(3), 7-6(5) victory over Gliner. Johnson had come back to take the second set from Kudla 6-3, and since the dual match was decided before they had started the third set, the two played a match tiebreaker, which Kudla won 11-9.

Roditi acknowledged that the final score was a bit deceptive.

"It would have been maybe a little scary if they had had their full lineup, but they were all out there, Farah played doubles, and they were all cheering, and it was fun. It was a great experience."

Southern Cal head coach Peter Smith knew that the timing of the event wasn't ideal for his team, smack as they are in the middle of the Pac-10 season, but he wasn't about to shrink from the challenge.

"It was classic David Roditi," Smith said. "After the team beat Miami, I texted him that that wasn't a fair matchup, and he said then why don't we play you? I said okay, let's go. March 31st, that's a terrible day, but hey, we've got to uphold the college."

"I think it was a great experience for the USTA juniors, especially to get a glimpse of what top college doubles is like," Smith added. "When you're a junior and you're playing doubles, it's too much about shot-making, and it has to be more about disciplined pattern play."

After the match, many of the several dozen students at the after-school program at the USTA's Carson Training Center, who had served as ballrunners, got to play a little too.

"Sam Querrey stayed for about an hour or an hour and a half after the match playing games with all the ballkids," said Smith, who mentioned that Kaes Van't Hof and Tracy Austin were also there. "We played 'Smash Them in the Face,' we played 'Live Ball', we did all these drills, and Sam enjoyed it as much as any kid out there. It was such a great moment for tennis, I couldn't even believe it."

For more on the match, see the USC Trojans' website.

Tags: college tennis, junior tennis, David Roditi, Southern Cal, Peter Smith, USTA, Sam Querrey, JT Sundling, Colette Lewis