Final Day of Regional Play - Sakinis Wins Northeast & Rinderknech Wins Texas

Dartmouth's Dovydas Sakinis was the #1 seed for a reason as he proved his worth today when he ran through Columbia freshman Victor Pham to win the Northeast Region singles title.

Sakinis got the first break of the match when he broke Pham to go up 5-3 then followed that up with a hold from 40-15 to take the opening set 6-3.  Sakinis went up an early break in the second set and then went up 3-1 after holding on the deciding point. Sakinis would break again to go up 5-2 and then the big lefty would close out the Championship after hitting a big serve out wide followed by a big forehand crosscourt winner to seal the 6-3, 6-2 win.

Comments from Dartmouth recap
“I am very happy for Dovydas,” head coach Chris Drake said. “Any time you get to this stage of the tournament, you hope to be able to bring your best level of tennis. There was no doubt that Dovydas was able to do that. From the first point, he played an extremely professional match. Once he got ahead, he never let his opponent mount any legitimate comeback.”

Pollanen Wins Midwest, Wilczynski Takes Northwest, & Sakinis/Pham To Meet in Northeast

Going into today semifinals many figured Ohio State would have 1 of its 2 guys make the finals but even the biggest of Buckeye fans wouldn't have banked on 2 but that's just what happened.

Buckeye junior Herkko Pollanen (UTR 13.39) cruised to a 6-1 opening set against the #1 seed Quentin Monaghan (UTR 14.08) but the Notre Dame senior took the second set 6-4 after breaking Pollanen's 4-5 service game. Pollanen went ahead for good in the third set after breaking Monaghan's 2-2 service game and Herkko would break again to close out the match for the 6-1, 4-6, 6-3 win.

Buckeye senior Chris Diaz (14.02) advanced to the finals after knocking off Northwestern junior Strong Kirchheimer (13.60) 7-6(6), 7-5 though Kirchheimer definitely had his chances in both sets.  Kirchheimer broke Diaz to go up 5-3 in the opening set but he'd be unable to serve the set out as Diaz broke back and held for 5-5.  In the opening set tiebreak Kirchheimer came back from 5-2 down to lead 6-5 and had set point on his serve but Diaz won both points on Kirchheimer's serve and then won the next on his to take the tiebreak 8-6. In the second set Diaz would break Kirchheimer's 5-6 service game to close out the win.

In the all-Buckeye final, Pollanen would jump out to a 3-1 lead in both sets and while he finished off the opening set without any issues Diaz would make a match of it in the second.  Despite the push by Diaz, Pollanen would break Diaz's 5-6 service game to clinch the championship and automatic berth in next month's National Indoor Intercollegiates.

It's the 4th year in a row that an Ohio State Buckeye has won the Midwest singles title with Mikael Torpegaard taking it last year and Peter Kobelt winning it the 2 years prior.

Despite the loss Notre Dame's Quentin Monaghan will still be heading to New York as an at-large due to his #5 preseason ranking.

Denver Sweeps Mountain, Orkin Takes Fall Classic, Steve Johnson Just Misses

It was a great day to be a Denver Pioneer in Albuquerque as Diogo Rocha took the singles championship over Utah's Dan Little and Henry Craig and Alex Gasson took the doubles championship over New Mexico's Hayden Sabatka and Bart Van Leijsen.

Rocha didn't have an easy road to the title as 4 of his 6 matches went 3-sets and he had to come back from 3-1 down in the 3rd set today against Little before pulling it out 6-4 in the 3rd. Utah had a nice recap of today's match explaining the ebbs and flows - give it a read!

Craig and Gasson cruised until today's match but had to come back from a set down to win in a 3rd set supertiebreak over the Sabatka and Van Leijsen.

Saturday Regional Results

In South Bend at the Midwest Regional, 6 of the top 8 seeds moved into the quarterfinals where they'll be joined by Michigan's Carter Lin (12.51) who beat not 1 but 2 top 11 seeds. Lin first upset the #11 seed Toledo's Stjepan Sisko (13.30) 6-4, 6-4 then followed that up by beating the #7 seed Valpo's Jeffrey Schorsch (13.59) 6-4, 5-7, 7-5. Ohio State has 3 in the quarters with Chris Diaz, Ralf Steinbach, and Herkko Pollanen all advancing and they had a 4th in contention before freshman Martin Joyce fell to Illinois's Aron Hiltzik 6-3, 7-6 in the Round of 16.  The host Irish have 2 still remaining in #1 Quentin Monaghan and Eddy Covalschi while Illinois's Aron Hiltzik and Northwestern's Strong Kirchheimer round out the quarters.

Midwest (South Bend, IN) -  Singles & Doubles Draws

Round of 32 
[1] Quentin Monaghan (Notre Dame) def. Toshiki Matsuya (Illinois) 6-3, 6-2
[12] Leopold Gomez Islinger (UW-Green Bay) def. [21] Matt Mendez (Ohio State) 6-1, 6-2
[5] Ralf Steinbach (Ohio State) def. Matej Svjetlicic (Western Michigan) 6-3, 5-7, 6-0
[17] Fedor Baev (Northwestern) def. [16] Alex Knight (Michigan) 2-6, 6-4, 6-2
Julian Childers (Illinois) def. [3] Sam Shropshire (Northwestern) 3-6, 6-2, 6-3
[20] Eddy Covalschi (Notre Dame) def. [14] Josef Dodridge (Wisc) 6-4, 5-7, 7-6(5)

Regional & SEC Fall Classic Updates

In Albuquerque at the Mountain Regional, 4 of the top 10 seeds were knocked out in the first 2 days and then today 4 of the top 6 went down in the Round of 16 and Quarterfinals. Utah and Denver each have 2 guys in the semifinals with Dan Little sets to face Yannik James and Matt Cowley to meet Diogo Rocha.

Seeded Upsets (w UTRs listed after school name - *means reliability <100%)
Daniel Echeverry (Utah St/11.24*) def. [15] Freddie McGeehan (Utah/12.45) 6-2, 3-6, 6-4
Mark Kovacs (Idaho/12.11) def. [5] Thomas Tenrerio (Boise St/12.94) 2-6, 6-0, 6-1
[31] Keaton Cullimore (BYU/13.75*) def. [10] Toby Mitchell (Boise St/12.98) 6-3, 6-2
[26] Matt Cowley (Utah/12.19) def. [16] Cristofer Goncalves (NMSU/12.39) 7-5, 4-6, 6-3
Romai Ugarte (Utah St/12.69*) def. [7] Alex Gasson (Denver/12.84) 6-4, 4-3 ret.
Tim Handel (N Arizona/11.97) def. [9] Bart Van Leijsen (New Mexico/12.73) 7-6, 6-1

SEC Fall Classic

In addition to the 5 USTA/ITA Regionals taking place this weekend there will also be 9 SEC teams sending guys to Auburn, Alabama for the 2015 SEC Fall Classic.

Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Vanderbilt are the 9 teams participating with Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, and Texas A&M not attending. Texas A&M has a good excuse though - they participating in the USTA/ITA Texas Regional.

Singles Seeds:
1. Danny Valent (Vanderbilt)
2. Giammarco Micolani (Arkansas)
3. Maxx Lipman (Florida)
4. Marko Krickovic (Auburn)
5. Elliott Orkin (Florida)
6. Rhys Johnson (Vanderbilt)
7. Filip Kraljevic (Ole Miss)
8. Thomas Mayronne (South Carolina)

USTA/ITA Regional Championships (2nd Week)

7 of the 12 Men's Regionals were completed last weekend with the other 5 taking place this coming weekend.  Below are the 5 taking place this week with information that's available as of this moment.


Mountain (Albuquerque, NM) - Oct 21-25 - Draws
Top 16 Singles Seeds:
1. Henry Craig (Denver)
2. Diogo Rocha (Denver)
3. Hayden Sabatka (New Mexico)
4. Parker McGuiness (Utah)
5. Thomas Tenrerio (Boise State)
6. Shane Monroe (BYU)
7. Alex Gasson (Denver)
8. Dan Little (Utah)
9. Bart Van Leijsen (New Mexico)
10. Toby Mitchell (Boise State)
11. David Fox (Denver)
12. Yannick James (Denver)
13. Andrey Goyachkov (BYU)
14. Jamie Barajas (Utah State)
15. Freddie McGeehan (Utah)
16. Cristofer Goncalves (New Mexico State)

Atlantic & Carolina Regionals Crown Champs

Both the Atlantic and Carolina Regionals came to a close today with players from Virginia Tech, Old Dominion, Wake Forest, and North Carolina State picking up titles.

Virginia Tech's Joao Monteiro won the singles championship at the Atlantic Regional, which was hosted by Virginia Tech, with a 6-3, 7-6(4) win over Old Dominion's Adam Moundir. Monteiro won each of his 6 matches in straight sets with his wins coming over Temple's Santiago Canete, William & Mary's Aidan Talcott, Penn State's Matt Barry, Old Dominion's Michael Weindl, Penn State's Aws Laaribi, and Moundir in the final.

Southwest, Southeast, Ohio Valley, & Central Crown Champions

Monday was a great day for Indiana's Sam Monette as the Hoosier senior swept the podium by taking both the singles and doubles crown at the Ohio Valley Regional. Monette knocked off Tennessee Tech's Edu Mena 6-1, 6-3 in the singles final and then teamed up fellow senior Daniel Bednarczyk to defeat Ball State's Lucas Anderson and Andrew Stutz 6-1, 6-2 in the doubles final. Monette didn't drop a set all week in route to winning 7 singles matches and 6 doubles matches.

#GoIU #GoHoosiers pic.twitter.com/HoeG5cTLTz

— Indiana Men's Tennis (@IUMTennis) October 19, 2015

Championship Monday

There will be 4 more USTA/ITA Regional singles and doubles champions crowned today with each winner earning a main draw berth into next month's National Indoor Intercollegiate Championships in New York.

Below is what is in store for today - Tennessee has a blog running for the Ohio Valley, Arkansas is running live scoring for the Central, Florida's twitter will have updates for the Southeast, USC & UCLA will have twitter updates for the Southwest, UNC will have twitter updates for the Carolina, and Virginia Tech has live streaming video for the Atlantic.

Super Bowl Champ Crowned, Hinnisdaels Wins In T-Town, Success on the Tour

There were 2 bids handed out today to next month's Men's National Indoor Intercollegiate Championships (NIIC) and those went to Georgia Gwinnett's Kevin Konfederak and Auburn's Max Hinnisdaels.

Konfederak, who won the NAIA singles championship on Saturday, won the all-division Super Bowl today by defeating Asuza Pacific's Jan Meyer 6-2, 6-2.  A short while later Konfederak and Jordan Cox defeated Concordia's Jui Mao and Ofir Ginat 6-2, 6-4 to win the Super Bowl doubles title.

Sunday Regionals

Ohio Valley (Knoxville) Regional - Singles Draw + Blog

Semifinals 

Edu Mena (Tennessee Tech) def. Ricky Medinilla (Purdue) 6-4, 4-6, 7-6(5)
[15] Sam Monette (Indiana) def. [9] Alex Gornet (Louisville) 6-2, 7-6(7)

Championship (Monday)

[15] Sam Monette (Indiana) vs. Edu Mena (Tennessee Tech) 

Central (Fayetteville) Regional  - Singles Draw
Semifinals (Sunday) - Live Scoring
[3] Alex Ghilea (Oklahoma) def. [10] Michael Redlicki (Arkansas) 6-3, 6-4
[12] Julian Cash (Oklahoma St) def. [8] Felix Corwin (Minnesota) 6-1, 6-4

Championship (Monday) - Live Scoring
[3] Alex Ghilea (Oklahoma) vs. [12] Julian Cash (Oklahoma St)

Saturday Regional Updates + Konfederak/Meyer in Super Bowl Final

In addition to the 7 men's D1 regionals taking place this weekend there's also the National Small College Championships taking place in Sumter, South Carolina. The SC Nationals have the top players from D2, D3, JUCO, and NAIA battling for a coveted wild card into next month's National Indoor Intercollegiates in New York. The champs from each division meet in a 4-person/team draw to determine the Super Bowl champ.

The NAIA National Champion Georgia Gwinnett's Kevin Konfederak (13.79) defeated the JUCO National Champ Tyler JC's Ferran Calvo (13.11) 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 in the one semifinal while D2 NC Azusa Pacific's Jan Meyer (13.83) defeated D3 NC Middlebury's Noah Farrell (12.43) 6-3, 6-2.

Konfederak and Meyer will meet Sunday morning at 10am - check out the ITA's event page for match recaps and quotes along with full results from each division.

Friday Regional Recap: Gators Chompin', Green Waves Rollin', Ohio Valley Wide Open

Southeast: The main draw got started on Friday and the host Florida Gators cleaned up going 8-0 which included Josh Wardell (13.18) beating Georgia's Walker Duncan (13.68) 6-4, 4-6, 6-3. 11 of the top 16 seeds won their opening round match but Georgia's Wayne Montgomery and South Florida's Sasha Gozun weren't 2 of them. Florida State's Marco Nunez (13.41) upset the #2 seed Montgomery (14.51) 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 while Miami's Max Andrews (13.56) beat the #8 seed Gozun (13.55) 6-3, 6-3.

Thursday Regional Recap: Elliott Yee upsets Pennington, Dzulynsky over Spec, Surat over Krickovic

Several regionals opened up today and it didn't take long for a few upsets to take place with the #1, #6, and #7 seeds getting beat in the 1st round of the Ohio Valley Regional in Knoxville.

Indiana senior Elliott Yee pulled off the biggest upset when he beat the #1 seed Kentucky's Beck Pennington 6-3, 6-4 in the 1st round. This was also a Universal Tennis Rating (UTR) upset as well with Yee having a 11.91 UTR while Pennington's is 13.71.

Purdue junior Ricky Medinilla (12.66) upended the #6 seed Vanderbilt's Rhys Johnson (13.35) 3-6, 6-1, 7-5 in the 1st round and Austin Peay junior Aaron Jumonville (12.29) knocked out the #7 seed Indiana's Daniel Bednarczyk (13.05) 7-5, 7-6(6).

The #1 seed in the Central Regional (Fayetteville, AR) also got upset as Nebraska's Andrew Dzulynsky (12.18) took out #1 Minnesota's Matic Spec (14.03) 6-4, 6-4 in the 2nd round. All other seeds players advanced to the 3rd round in Fayetteville.

USTA/ITA Regional Championships (Updated Draws)

Over the next 2 weeks regional championships will be held in every ITA region with the champion of each advancing to next month's National Indoor Intercollegiate Championship which will held at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York.

Below is the list of regionals that are taking place this week with the others being played the following week.  The ITA's page below also has the same list and they should have draws added in as well.  I'll add them in too as they become available.

NCAA D1 Tennis Committee Meeting Recap

A few months back the NCAA Division 1 Men's and Women's Tennis Committee had its annual meeting to discuss different topics/items for the upcoming season.  The information is available to the general public on ncaa.org but it can be tough to find so I figured I'd share the report here and talk about some of the interesting things that they discussed.

Below are the conferences whose champions are guaranteed a bid into the 64-team NCAA Tournament.  The Southland (Texas A&M Corpus Christi, Lamar, New Orleans, Nicholls St, Abilene Christian, Incarnate Word) was granted a waiver to get a bid despite only having 4 eligible teams last season. Both Abilene Christian and Incarnate Word recently made the move from Division 2 to Division 1 and thus are ineligible for postseason play until the 2017-18 season.

In its review of the 2015 NCAA Championships they talked about needing to spruce up the selection show with more commentary about specific match-ups.  They also mentioned that travel distance and conference opponent restrictions played a role in where teams were placed in the bracket (not new).

Thai-Son Kwiatkowski Rolls To All-American Singles & Doubles Championship

Virginia's Thai-Son Kwiatkowski is the 2015 Saint Francis Health System ITA Men's All-American Singles Champion after routing Tulane's Dominik Koepfer 6-0, 6-2 in the finals in a match that took around 55 minutes to complete.

Kwiatkowski was in control from start to finish by working Koepfer from side-to-side and more points than not ended with a Koepfer miss with many coming off the forehand wing. Kwiatkowski played great defense but also hit some huge forehands to finish off several games.

3 of Koepfer's 7 service games went to the deciding 40-40 point and he lost all 3. Koepfer struggled at the net and lost 3 different games on a volley that he either mishit or didn't place well enough.

Kwiatkowski/Koepfer Into Finals, Norrie & Tearney Win Futures, UGA Club Team Takes Fall Invitational

After a few close matches on Saturday, Sunday brought a pair of straight sets wins with little suspense as Virginia's Thai-Son Kwiatkowski and Tulane's Dominik Koepfer each rolled into the finals.

Thai-Son Kwiatkowski actually fell behind Stanford's Tom Fawcett 2-0 in the opening set but then he reeled off 5 straight games to go up 5-2. After a Fawcett hold, Kwiatkowski would serve out the set and then go up an immediate break in the second set to put Fawcett on his heels. Kwiatkowski wouldn't let up and would close out the 6-3, 6-2 win in just over an hour.

Dominik Koepfer would book his spot to the finals with a 6-4, 6-4 win over Cal's Andre Goransson. Koepfer broke the Goransson serve in the 10th and final game of each set to close it out.

Down to the Final 4

Saturday was a busy day for the guys in Tulsa with both the Round of 16 and Quarterfinals held within hours of each other but by the time the dust cleared we had our final 4 and they all happen to be top 16 seeds.

The 8 morning matches saw 6 finish in straight sets with Tom Fawcett, Thai-Son Kwiatkowski, Hugo Di Feo, Dominik Koepfer, Uros Petronijevic, and Andre Goransson each winning somewhat comfortably.

Both Ronnie Schneider and Konrad Zieba needed 3 sets in their Round of 16 matches though both cruised in the 3rd set taking the final set by 6-2 scores.  The one thing that was a little strange was the fact that Ronnie Schneider and Shane Vinsant started their Round of 16 match a good two and a half hours after several of the other matches. In fact as the 3rd set started the 3 other quarterfinal matches had already began.

Tennis On Campus - Fall Invitational

The courts at the Palmetto Dunes Tennis Center on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina will be packed this weekend as coed teams from 48 schools across the country compete in the 6th annual USTA Tennis on Campus Fall Invitational.

The University of Florida is going for 3 in a row at the Fall Invitational and they opened up their defense of the title with 3 wins yesterday including a 24-16 win over Ohio State in the Round of 16. The event utilizes the same scoring format as World Team Tennis.

Below is the list of the schools participating and you can follow the event at TOC's event page.  Here is Friday's recap and here are some more FAQ about Tennis On Campus for those not familiar.

All-American 2nd Round: #1 Monaghan, #2 Alvarez, #6 Cid, #8 Montgomery Upset

Rain pushed play indoors on Day 2 of the main draw in Tulsa but that didn't hurt Auburn's Marko Krickovic as the qualifer knocked off the #1 seed Quentin Monaghan (Notre Dame) 1-6, 7-5, 7-5. Monaghan cruised to a 6-1 opening set but Krickovic turned it around in the 2nd set and went up 5-2. Krickovic got broke serving for the set up 5-2 and 5-4 but then he broke Monaghan to go up 6-5 and finally got a service hold to take the set 7-5.  The 3rd set stayed on serve until Krickovic broke for a 4-3 lead and then he consolidated the break with a hold for 5-3. Monaghan would come back from 0-40 down on his serve to hold for 5-4 and then he'd go up 0-40 on the Krickovic serve before breaking from 30-40 to even the match at 5-5. Krickovic would break back on the 40-40 deciding point by clubbing a Monaghan second serve and then finishing at the net with an overhead. Krickovic didn't fool around on his next service game and held quickly at love to finish off the upset win.

Main Draw Round 1 Results

Today was the beginning of the main draw at the All-Americans in Tulsa but things didn't exactly go as planned.  Play was supposed to begin at 9am central but due to an issue with the draw the ITA had to redo it which meant that play was pushed back by 3 hours until 12pm central.  The issue was that all 16 qualifiers were set to face a top 16 seed which isn't the way it's supposed to be done so after the draw was restructured we had 31 new match-ups with only the Nicolas Alvarez/Joao Monteiro pairing staying the same.

Once play begin there was 1 top 8 seed to get upset with #5 Romain Bogaerts of Wake Forest going down to Denver's Diogo Rocha 6-3, 6-3. This was also a Universal Tennis Rating upset with Rocha having a 13.23 UTR and Bogaerts a 14.37 UTR.

There were 2 other Top 16 seeds to get defeated with Georgia's Austin Smith and Texas Tech's Felipe Soares getting knocked out by Texas A&M's Shane Vinsant and USC's Nick Crystal.

The ITA's recap has a few quotes from some of the winners.


All-American 1st Round Results:

[1] Monaghan (ND) def. [WC] Lovett (AL) 5-7, 6-4, 6-3

[Q] Krickovic (AU) def. [WC] Pritchard (TU) 3-6, 6-2, 6-1

[9-16] Fawcett (ST) def. Lomacki (UM) 6-4, 6-4

[Q] Duncan (UGA) def. [Q] Bushamuka (UK) 6-2, 1-6, 7-6(5)

[7] Schneider (UNC) def. Torpegaard (OSU) 6-4, 7-6(5)

Qualifying Is Complete - Main Draw Starts Tomorrow

After 5 days of qualifying the field is now set for the main draw at this year's ITA Men's All-American Championships.

Florida freshman Alfredo Perez pulled off the somewhat rare feat of going 7-0 over the last 5 days by coming from the pre-qualifying draw to the qualifying draw and now to the main draw.  Ohio State's Matt Mendez, who got into the qualifying draw as a lucky loser, almost joined Perez in the main draw but after rallying from 5-2 down in the 3rd to tie it at 5-5 he would drop the final 2 games and lose 6-3, 4-6, 7-5 to North Carolina's Robert Kelly.

Perez is joined by 2 other freshman in the main draw with Georgia's Walker Duncan and Ohio State's Hugo Di Feo also qualifying.

Qualifying Draw Continues - Seeds Continue To Fall

There were 32 seeded players in the 128 man qualifying draw but only 11 are still alive as we head to the final day of qualifying at the All-American's in Tulsa.

There were 3 Top 10 seeds knocked out on Tuesday as San Diego's Jordan Angus defeated the #1 seed, UCLA's Martin Redlicki, 6-3, 6-4, Northwestern's Konrad Zieba defeated the #8 seed, Cal's Filip Bergevi, 7-6(7), 6-2, and Tulane's Constantin Schmitz cruised past the #9 seed, Oklahoma State's Arjun Kadhe, 6-4, 6-1.

The 3 Top 10 seeds that made it to the final round of qualies are Memphis's Andrew Watson (#2) who defeated UCLA's Karue Sell 7-6(3), 6-4, USC's Max De Vroome (#5) who got past Arkansas's Jose Salazar 3-6, 7-6(4), 6-2, and Florida State's Michael Rinaldi (#10) who defeated Charlotte's Jordi Ferrer 4-6, 6-2, 6-3.